I met my husband online when we were 12, on AOL. We didn't meet in person until he was 19 and I was 18, and I took a bus to Texas from Eastern Washington to meet him the day he graduated tech school (Air Force). Plan was, I'd road trip with him from Texas back to Washington, and he'd continue on to Alaska alone.

I spent two and a half days on the bus with layovers in multiple states, but the last stretch was early morning through the afternoon, one shot. If you didn't know, Greyhound busses pump recycled air through the cabin, so it was a pretty comfortable environment.

So we finally stop in Wichita Falls, and I'm grinning like a fool, heart pounding, half scared he's going to be a 40 year old axe murderer, and take a step off the bus--straight into 100% humidity.

Now, Eastern Washington used to be dry as the fucking Mojave and is literally a desert. I had never once in my life experienced humidity. I also have asthma. So, before I even landed on the ground, my throat closed up and I nearly blacked out. The bus depot guy had to grab me to keep me from falling face first on the pavement.

Meanwhile, humidity apparently gives me hives. So there I was, having an asthma attack, broken out in hives, surrounded by strangers in a place I'd never been before, and I can't find the guy I was supposed to meet. Anywhere.

Turned out he's really socially awkward and shy, so he was waiting in his car on top of a hill in a different parking lot, and I had to call him to come find me.

Finally meet him, awkward hug, I'm itchy as fuck and red in the face, wheezing and coughing as my throat is opening back up, and he's not talking, and I had to pee and was insecure for like the first time since junior high thinking "how do I explain that I'm not usually this fucking weird without sounding even weirder? He's so hot, what the fuck am I doing here?"

We headed to a motel where some of his classmates, his bunk mate from Basic and his dorm mate from Tech School were staying before everyone headed to different stations. Ordered pizza, watched movies, somehow scored multiple bottles of hard liquor and got absolutely trashed.

This fixed my nerves enough to make my hives finally go away, and apparently made him stop panicking about meeting a girl, and as soon as I realized he actually thought I was attractive and wasn't freaked out by my weirdness and was instead just terrified of me, we had fun. Multiple times. We drove to Alaska (I decided not to stay home when we got there) starting in the middle of May and ended up getting married in the beginning of August.