The Picture That Launched a Thousand Pirate Jokes

Valentine's Day is about romance and who knows more about romance than romance writers? Book stores know this. That's why it makes perfect sense to have an event featuring local romance writers at a book store on Valentine's Day. And that's exactly what happened. Leslie and others from the local writer's group were asked to appear at the book store to participate  in the event. They were asked to read romantic passages from books of their choosing. Leslie asked me to help and we read from The Notebook.

What Leslie didn't know was that prior to the event I made some preparations for my own Valentine's Day celebration. After we finished reading I slipped out to the car and got changed. I reentered the store, walked up to Leslie and presented her with a rose and a parchment on which I had copied a verse by hand in calligraphy. Someone snapped the picture you see here.

I was working at the Kennedy Space Center at the time. The story got out, as did the picture. Both made the rounds of pretty much every NASA center. To this day I get pirate jokes whenever I run into old friends at my annual professional conference.

This event was more or less the start of all the "Bruce is a romantic guy" talk. Whatever. As I've said all along I don't have a problem showing my wife how I feel about her. Here's two "secrets" to being romantic. Number one. You can't just talk the talk, you have to walk the walk. You can say "I love you" and all the other things that get said but unless your actions consistently match what you're saying...they're just words. Number two. You can't care about how those actions make you look to other people.