How I Met Your Mother

First off, I forgot to mention yesterday that this Friday's picture theme will be Halloween costumes. GO!


On with the show. Ok, yesterday Middle Aged Woman left me a comment which read:

I'll make you a deal. You e-mail me a question for tomorrow's post, and I'll e-mail you one. Topic covered, we just have to BS our way through the answer!

Sounds good to me. Email later in the day:

How did you and Supreme Leader meet? If you have already answered this on your blog, feel free to make up something completely fictional.

While fiction would be entertaining, the real life story is pretty interesting without embellishment. If you're interested, make yourself comfortable, this might take awhile.

We need to go back in time to 1965. Or 1966. Doesn't really matter, there won't be a quiz. The city is Vientiane, the capital city of Laos, a small country in South East Asia. Supreme Leader's mother, who is from northern Thailand, has moved here to work in a family member's lumber yard. Supreme Leader's father, wisely not wanting to be drafted into the South Vietnamese Army, also moves to Laos and finds work in the same lumber yard.

Sigh. Fast forward 42 years and Princess PITA (pain in the ass) saunters in from the living room and starts reading over my shoulder.

Pita: She worked as a servant in the house.
Me: Whatever.
Pita: It was my uncle's lumber yard. My father's brother.
Me: I don't remember the story that way.

Banter I was a part of but not entirely paying attention to...

Me: How about you don't read my stories until they're done.
Pita: (some smart ass comment I can't quite remember now)
Me: You don't even know what you're talking about. You're making this shit up.
Pita: I'm embellishing like my husband.

Ok, so her parents meet in Vientiane at some point during the Vietnam War at some relatives house or place of business. Romance and marriage ensue. Two brothers, Supreme Pita and then three more sisters arrive. And then Laos falls to the communists. Oops. The family flees the country and ends up in a refugee camp in Thailand. (That part is a story in itself) After a few years the family is sponsored into Canada by a church group. The family is flown from Thailand to Montreal. In December. Out of the frying pan and into the deep freeze. Blah-di-blah-di-blah, the family is then shipped west to Richmond, British Columbia.

Now we fast forward to 1991. Young Captain Dumbass finds himself in Montreal, broke and aimless after chasing a girl here. He's just come back from a four month European drink fest and he has just enough money to get him back to his home town of Kamloops, British Columbia. Now fate leans in and bitch slaps the Captain... although I guess back then we should be referring to him as PFC. Dumbass. Anyway, instead of asking for a one way Greyhound ticket to his home town, Private Dumbass asks for a ticket to Vancouver. And yes, Greyhound as in bus. Almost 5000 kilometres or over 3000 miles. On the bus. In winter. There is nothing romantic about this. It is soul crushing and excruciatingly boring. The trip should take roughly three days, however, due to earlier than usual warm weather, mudslides and flooding turn the young Privates trip into a 6 day journey through unwashed Hell.

About day five into the odyssey he realizes his mistake with the ticket and calls his mother who then calls his grandparents in Vancouver to alert them. At about six o'clock in the morning the next day, Private Dumbass shows up on his grandparents front steps, exhausted and smelling much like the Ark must have the day before it grounded. His loving grandparents, who love him the most because he was their first, feed him, clean him off (hose him off before they'll let him in) and send him off to bed. While he sleeps they leave to do some grocery shopping at a nearby supermarket. As they leave the store they notice that they are hiring and they bring their favourite grandson home an application. Later in the day he awakes for lunch, fills out the application and takes it back with his grandfather. He is hired the next day and goes to work in the bakery. Where it just so happens a young Supreme Leader is also working.

And that's how we met. And, just to round everything out, we live two blocks from the church that sponsored SL's family into Canada.