Following Edge

This week I had to visit the Multnomah County library in Portland to get this copy from the August 19, 1998 issue of Willamette Week. I was happy to find it 120 miles from home, in the middle of microfiche roll in the midst of a room full of microfiche rolls. This was one case where the library beat out the power of the Internet to find something I really wanted.

Have you guessed that this ad was what brought me together with Anne Marie? This ad was the pinnacle of my research on personal ads over the Summer of 1998. There is such a difference between what you ask for in a personal ad and what you get in responses, that you have to really make a study of comparing the two if you want to be successful. After three ads and pages of notes from talking to and meeting dozens of people, I ran the ad you see here as my "coup de gras" with the expectation of finding just the person I needed.

Of course, it worked! But, not before it was selected as "Ad of the Week" and my life briefly became a socially rigorous process of talking with and meeting a bunch of people. (I know I got Anne Marie's name and her age wrong in my notes, but she didn't spell her name and only said that she was concerned that she might be too old since I didn't specify an age range, so I guessed.)

Now you may be wondering why, having kept all of this detailed information about these ads for this long, I didn't hold on to the original copy of the ad. Unfortunately, when we stopped seeing each other two months later, I threw it away (and used the $50 "Ad of the Week" prize to place another ad... which didn't work out well since I was so gloomy about Anne Marie). Obviously, it's a good thing that everything subsequently worked itself out.

It has been nice to revisit all of this following our 5-year wedding anniversary this month. I always say that even though it's only been a few years, it seems like an eternity. But, of course, I mean that in the best way.