I Met My Husband Because Of A Bet. Or Did I?

This is not your ordinary ghost story. Nor is it a ordinary love story. It's a bit of both.

In the fall of '82 I was working in a machine shop at minimum wage making drill bits. My brothers' friend had been laid off so he made a bet with me. I had to type up and mail out 25 resumes by a certain date and he had to have a job by the same date, the loser had to buy the winner a steak dinner. Well, it was a tie so neither of us had to buy the other dinner.

I was a little disappointed because I got two letters saying they were sorry but my services were not needed. Then one day my mother called my job at quitting time and she told me to get home asap to call a prestigious hospital. I got home just in time to call and set up an interview. I got the job but it was a split shift working 11A.M. To 7 P.M. When the shift changed, I saw the man I knew I would spend the rest of my life with, which kind of surprised me because he wasn't the type of guy I typically went out with. He had a girlfriend who broke his heart by breaking up with him right before the holidays the next year.

We were set up by co-workers, or so they thought. As we started dating too many coincidences came up. I forgot to tell you I'm a day older than him. My grandfather was a tile setter and during a conversation with him, I told my grandfather that my boyfriend was a volunteer fireman. My grandfather said that he tiled the truck room at his firehouse. I doubted him until he told me that the tile color was yellow, which was still there! My husband had an Uncle Joe and a grandfather who both died in the late 1970s'. Everyone in his family said that Uncle Joe would have loved me and we would have driven the family crazy with our stunts and jokes. Some even said Uncle Joe made sure we got together.

I was raised on the south shore of Long Island, my husband the north. But if I was staying at my grandparents' my grandfather would take me to places my husband went to all the time.

My husband's uncle was a plumber and bus driver for my husband's school district, my grandfather did a lot of tile work in the town my husband grew up in so they probably knew each other.

Like I said some people in my husband's family said Uncle Joe made sure we got together. My husband's last surviving uncle once said that Joe wouldn't like either of his daughter in-laws (nobody did) so he HAD to have to find me for his favorite nephew.