We’d been dating a few months when I left Colorado for Purdue.
“I’ve been accepted into their PhD program,” I told him over coffee. “It’s a great opportunity.”
“I think that’s wonderful,” he said. “You must be really excited.”
“I am,” I said. “Though I don’t want to leave Colorado. And I’ll miss you.”
“I’ll miss you too.”
There was a pause. We looked at each other.
“I’m not sure the long distance thing can work,” I told him.
“Well, you should feel free to date other people,” he said. “I doubt I will, but it’s OK if you do.”
“You should feel free to date other people too,” I told him, compelled to be fair.
He called me while I was at Purdue. At least a couple of times a week. The conversations were friendly. He told me about work, I told him about school. Sometimes I told him about guys I was dating. He was cool with that. But he didn’t tell me about anyone he was dating. He claims he never did.
Then I mentioned to him how much I missed Dilbert.
“Dilbert?” he asked.
“You know, the comic strip,” I told him. “I used to love reading it but the local newspaper doesn’t carry it.”
This was before you could source your comics online.
The next week I got an envelope in the mail. It had a really short letter from him. Maybe two paragraphs. Nothing romantic. He signed it “Your friend”. But it had 7 Dilberts. He had cut out the comic from his local paper.
For the next two years, while I was at Purdue, every week I would get an envelope in the mail. The envelope always had the Dilberts from the prior week. It was always accompanied by a short letter on lined paper.
He never said anything romantic in the letters. But then, he didn’t have to. He was clipping my Dilberts for me every single day for two years. He never missed a day. He knew how much I loved reading that comic.
Of course I married him.
—
Previously published on medium
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Photo credit: by Timur Romanov on Unsplash