He fell in love with my hair, Gabriella. Even before he saw my eyes. He’d walked into the classroom and had seen the hair, laid out over the desk in a huge, curly mess. I was passed out. Okay, I was tired. I fell asleep.
He was not pleased. He was a new teaching assistant, and he didn’t want his stupid students walking all over him before he even started talking. But he loved the hair. He thought it would be nice to film that hair with the right light.
The rest of the class was apparently laughing when he walked up to me and leaned over the hair.
“Boo!” he shouted.
I literally jumped, toppling my chair.
“Class has started,” he said calmly but looked into my eyes, and really, right there and then, we both knew.
You love this story. You can’t possibly understand it, but your father sits next to you in bed and recites it verbatim, night after night.
“It was love at first sight,” he always says. “We got married, and we lived happily ever after. And then.” He always pauses here, looks at you, raises his eyebrows, and you fall for it every time.
“What? What? What?” you squeal in that little pip-squeak voice.
“And then,” he says, “we had you.”