This is the story of Nancy and Greg.


This could be called “The story of Greg and Nancy.” Neither of us needs first billing to feel important. I prefer “Nancy and Greg,” though, because it makes the “d” easier to enunciate. “Greg ‘n’ Nancy” feels casual for a wedding announcement. Smoosh the phonemes a bit more, and “Greg’n’ancy” sounds like “Greg Anansi.” We aren’t a watchful spider trickster. We’re Nancy and Greg. These are the sorts of things we talk about when we’re alone.


We also talk about data processing and analysis, which is why I want to point out that this is not a story of our union, at least not in the mathematical sense of the word. The union of Nancy and Greg would be the entirety of each of our lives, including the parts that overlap and the parts that don’t. This story focuses on a few events in the intersection of our lives. We had our respective lives before we met each other, and we still have our respective careers and hobbies.  


I think this bears mentioning. Love stories run a risk of giving people unreasonable expectations about what romance looks like. We see our protagonists only during the bits of their lives that are strictly relevant to the love story itself. Nancy and I each worked hard before we met to become the sort of person someone would want to date; that’s just not the story I’m telling right now. 


We met on Bumble in the Spring of 2018. My philosophy with online dating is that people should chat long enough to figure out whether they want to meet in person, then either meet in person or cut the contact. Dragging out the haven’t-met-in-person phase wastes both of your time, and it makes you open to scams. This is a tangent, but maybe I have the attention of someone who needs to read this: Romance scams are common. It’s easy for people in another country to pretend to be in your area and in love with you– right up until you have to meet in person. 


Of course, my let’s-just-meet-already philosophy means I need to sell the idea of a date with very little known about each other. I might have impressed Nancy with my spelling and punctuation, but that’s not enough to prove I’m not a creeper. I suggested we meet at Black Hand Coffee at Patterson and Belmont.


A first date is a strange mission. The first objective is to figure out whether it’s worth continuing to talk to this person. Based on the answer to that question, the second objective is either A) Continue showing the other person the best time possible, or B) Find an excuse to leave.


I thought the date was going well, so I implemented Plan A. As we finished our coffee, I suggested we wander over to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, a couple blocks away. Nancy explained that she was sorry, but there was a crisis at the animal shelter. She simply had to go to Richmond Animal League, where she was a volunteer, because of a staffing emergency.


I thought, “If this is an excuse to get rid of me, it’s needlessly showboaty, but whatever.”

Nancy did continue talking to me, though, and for our second date, we did go to the art museum. That’s where she said the words that have stayed with me all these years: “I hope that thing is ceremonial.”


Nancy reads faster than I do, but I don’t read every placard. I’d moved on to the next gallery, where a sword at the far end caught my eye. I’d walked twenty feet toward it, trying to figure out what was bothering me about it. That’s when Nancy stepped into the gallery and immediately said the fateful words, “I hope that thing is ceremonial.” I turned to look at her. She was definitely talking about the sword. This woman, who up until now had presented herself as a pretty normal person, albeit a bit of an overachiever, had at a glance spotted a flaw in one piece among many from the far end of a gallery. 


The flaw was that the sword’s balance was horrible. I knew that. How did she know that, and how did she spot it so quickly? There are several subcategories of geekery that might lead a person to know about swords. This wasn’t even her showing off a factoid, though. She was so confident that it was so obvious that the sword’s balance was wrong that she wasn’t even mentioning that directly. She was making small talk on the assumption that the unbalance was obvious because, to her, it was that obvious.


It was a sign. The heavens didn’t open. There was no choir of angels. This was better. This was empirical evidence that this might be the kind of woman I wanted to be with. I started to suspect that Nancy might be a massive nerd.