Kory’s Kolumn

Love is hard to write about.
Not that there aren’t millions of works dedicated to the topic; it’s just that reading about love is never as good as being in it.
Take Jane Austen, for instance. Right now, Pride and Prejudice is being read by at least 63 girls on campus (and four junior guys taking British Neo-Classic and Romantic while smacking their lips distastefully).
Now, if an informal poll was issued to the single women on campus asking, “In what situation would you most likely meet your future husband?” 95 percent of them would answer, “I want to be standing in a British country ballroom, in a tasteful but expensive gown, look over my shoulder and see him climbing off a horse. Our eyes will meet for a moment that feels an eternity, and through a series of several weeks and many romantic misunderstandings, revealing letters and emotionally controlled conversations in the rain, he will ask for my hand, and we will share our first kiss.”
Right now, there are girls reading that passage and sighing and making those I-just-saw-a-baby-in-a-pumpkin-Halloween-costume noises. That’s great, and books like this sure make for compelling entertainment; the problem is that it never happens that way.
For instance, this last summer working as a youth camp counselor, I met my fiancée Jill (and if you’re reading this after Thursday the 11th, my wife Jill). She was my boss, and the first time I ever saw her, she was in front of an auditorium of people, and my first thought of her was, “Wow. She’s tall, and she has red hair,” and that was it. No horses. No smoldering glances over the shoulder. No perfumed letters. No Victorian gowns (I had to leave mine at home for the summer).
Many things happened after this that neither of us can fully explain, and we are now getting married, and I am happier than any man on the planet. Seriously. I am crazy in love.
You ask me, “Kory, how do you know she’s the one, and why did she not discard your English-major tuckus in lieu of an orthodontist?” Well, the answer to the second question is easy (because I look like Brad Pitt’s younger, hotter brother), but the answer to the first question is that, well ... I just do.
And folks, you’d be surprised how much love has to do with hot dogs.
I can remember, in particular, our third date. We went to a Salt Lake Bees game, and I asked her if she wanted to get a foot-long. Her eyes lit up, and five minutes later, I was looking on in a mixture of admiration, bewilderment and love as she consumed a frank piled high with so many onions, the visiting right-fielder got a tear in his eye and dropped a fly ball. I knew then that this was the girl for me.
I also remember a couple weeks ago, we were out purchasing a few home essentials we were pretty sure no one would give us at our wedding (I’m still holding out for that shower radio and the Utah Jazz wastebasket, though). We decided to pick up some celebratory food on the way home, so I stopped at the first place we passed, which happened to be a very classy restaurant (I can’t tell you which one, only that it rhymes with “Bienerschnitzel”).
Fifteen minutes later, we were sitting in my mother’s basement, and I’m wolfing down a Chili Lover’s Combo — replete with chili cheeseburger, chili cheese dog and chili cheese fries — and Jill sat patiently, watching me with what I hoped was a mixture of admiration, bewilderment and love. Instead of being repulsed by my extraordinary consumption of chili, she still liked me.
Scientists may say that love is merely a delusion mankind submits himself to in order to keep the species alive. I respect their opinions, but I disagree. No one has ever really defined love, nor how it really feels, nor why we feel it. It’s just one of those things you’ll know when you feel: it feels great, and frequently smells like hot dogs.

The Signpost would like to congratulate Kory Wood and Jill Catts on their engagement.