Posted by Jennifer at October 28th, 2007

In late November of 1999, my sister and I went to the Flying Saucer at Peabody Place and Second Avenue in Memphis, TN looking for some sisterly bonding. We spent a couple of hours sitting at the bar and eventually ambled over to the dart boards, where we spent a couple of hours playing cricket. Neither of us was very good at it. We had each managed to hit plenty of 15’s, 16’s, 17’s, 18’s, 19’s, and 20’s, but in order to win cricket, somebody has to get at least three bullseyes, and the bulls were eluding us that day.

Dave was at the dart board next to us, just taking shots by himself. Laura saw him there and struck up a conversation. My sister can talk to anybody, and she got all of the flirting abilities between the two of us. It’s a joke in our family that if she hadn’t been there, Dave and I would never have spoken. I’m sure that’s true. Despite the beer I’d been downing all afternoon, I still didn’t have the nerve nor the desire to strike up a conversation with a strange guy in a bar. She was married at the time, and despite her husband’s suspicions, she was 100% true to him, but she still loved practicing her flirting skills. I, on the other hand, was in my usual mode of trying to avoid men. The chances are good that if my sister hadn’t been there, not only would I not have talked to Dave, but I likely wouldn’t have even noticed him.

Fortunately, Laura started a conversation and Dave broke the ice by showing off his ability to hit a bullseye on his first shot at our board. She went home an hour or so later, which is another story altogether, and Dave and I ended up sitting there and talking for the next few hours. It turns out that he had season tickets to the Orpheum, and did not yet have someone to go with him to see Showboat, so he invited me, and we’ve been together ever since!

We got married on March 10, 2001 at First United Methodist Church in Memphis, TN. Our reception was at the Brooks Museum of Art and we spent our honeymoon touring Italy. Not long after returning from Italy, we moved to Houston, TX for three years. On January 18, 2004 we had our first child, Elliot Thomas. Later that year, we moved back to Memphis.