It is described by some as a moment when the world stops moving...it did just that for me. I knew before she said one word or made a single movement, that our lives would begin to dissolve into each other...we would never part again. This was not love at first sight, but rather second. I had fallen in love at eleven; now I was twenty and now all things were possible.

That was my first real experience at feeling set apart. Not only did I not knock them dead, but rather it was I that died...acutely aware of being mutton dressed up as lamb. I exchanged my white tie and tails for a white waiter’s jacket and got back to my proper calling!

Without a degree of risk, there is little chance for the enormous mixture of relief and achievement that follows in its steps. It is the leap that goes on to support even greater attempts at the seemingly impossible challenges that the world often uses to sort the men from the boys, and of course, the women from the girls!