For some reason I can't understand, things don't happen to me like they do to everybody else. I'm the one who, when everyone orders soup, gets the bowl with, say, someone's severed digit in it or something. Dating then, has been intriguing for me, and has never "just happened" like it does to normal people. As an example, we will slide back in time to my pre-knee-surgery days, when my Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday evenings were spent in two-hour kung-fu classes held on top of the university parking garage. My brother's friend, whom we shall call Ernesto (although that is certainly not his real name but I doubt he'd want me to reveal his true identity 11 years later), would bum a ride with me to class because he lived Far Away From Class, which is also where I lived. The ride took a total of 45 minutes each way. Ernesto and I had secret crushes on each other, but could not possibly admit our love because my brother was his best friend. So w...