This article is written from the perspective of Carson. I would like to thank Carlee for being an excellent editor by telling me which parts to throw out for either being overly saccharine or just plain stupid.

Much to the chagrin of humanity, the life of an average human is anything but linear. Despite most folks' best efforts to plan and control their destiny, the reality is that life is more of a “ride” that we cannot escape from and only have tenuous control over.

When I reflect back on how Carlee and I met, I often ponder the above couple of sentences. It’s amazing, and frankly incomprehensible, how an innumerable set of life choices and events, some small and some large, culminated somehow in our lives becoming entangled. Frankly, if I think about it too much, it makes me nauseous, as one single changed decision in my past life could easily have derailed the chain of necessary events that led me to typing out this sentence in my shared home with Carlee (and “our” dog Vada).

With that being said, let’s ditch my existentialist musings and move on to what you (the reader) are actually here for: how we met. But first, let’s get some boring facts out of the way.

I was born and raised in Zap, ND (check out our Wikipedia page) and attended North Dakota State University where I obtained my Doctor of Pharmacy degree in 2019. I elected to pursue additional post-doctoral training and matched with the pharmacy residency program at Mayo Clinic Health System in Mankato, Minnesota.

Carlee is a native to Mankato and attended Minnesota State University - Mankato where she obtained her BS in Exercise Science and later her MS in Exercise Physiology. During these college years, she worked as a pharmacy technician at the local hospital to pay her way through college where I was concurrently completing my training.

Naturally, as my training was mainly in acute care, I spent 97.3% of my time at the hospital. And, while I would like to wax poetic on how there was an instant connection, the reality is that I had little on my mind besides work. Anyone who has completed advanced training in the medical world can attest to how grueling and “all-consuming” it is. I was entirely focused on simply surviving day-to-day rather than fostering any sort of new relationship.

Still, despite my sleep deprivation and general curmudgeon attitude that year, I do recall thinking how cute and goofy she was. Despite her own busy life, she always came to work with a good attitude and overall lifted up our department’s morale. As cliche as it may sound, she wasn’t like many other girls I had met in my life. Her sense of humor bordered on the absurd (definitely a positive in my book) and had this personal confidence in who she was.

Fast-forward to the summer of 2020, despite the world (literally) falling apart everywhere, I was able to land a full time position at the hospital I trained at. With my mind less occupied with work, I was able to be more of myself and we built up somewhat of a rapport with each other (as two compatible single people in close proximity naturally do).

Then, on a fateful night in the middle of February 2021, Carlee, being the woman of action that she is (and probably correctly ascertaining that I was too nervous to ask her out), gently floated the idea that we should hang out sometime. I am told this decision was made with a little bit of “liquid encouragement” at the time.

Now, to be clear, there was an element of danger to her suggestion. In many ways, given she was a pharmacy technician and I a pharmacist, I was essentially her boss. She practiced under my license and I was legally responsible for the quality of her work. So, naturally, the ramifications of fostering a workplace romance certainly came to mind. What would my (well, “our”) employer think? Or my co-workers? Was such a relationship even legal, or kosher with company policy?

But, and I hope this doesn’t come off as too macabre, at that time we were surrounded by death and uncertainty. I had witnessed the deaths of many people (some even my age) and it truly put things into perspective. Tomorrow is never guaranteed. A person can do “everything right” and circumstances beyond their control could still completely destroy them.

I momentarily let these thoughts rattle around in my mind. But, I eventually landed on the only reasonable answer: “fuck it, sure.”

Then, as they say, the rest is history.