For Darren and Lindsey

This is the night James and I met Lindsey, who would marry Darren. It was at a play, The Guys, and when Darren introduced me to her, I shook her hand and she looked right into my eye and I thought, hmm, she seems different from the girls I usually see with Darren.

After the play we went with Brant (also pictured) to the classy JB's for pie or something, and she made a comment so insightful, I thought, hmm, I wish I had said that.

I was not surprised when Darren told us they were getting married. I was more like, hmm, that makes sense.

Now they are married and have a baby and are presumably happy (correct me if I'm wrong, guys), and I just stumbled on this photo of the first time we met.

Also for Darren, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest Winners for worst first lines:

On reflection, Angela perceived that her relationships with Tom had always been a little rocky, not quiet a roller-coaster ride but more like when the toilet-paper roll gets a little squashed so it hangs crooked and every time you pull some off you can hear the rest going bumpity-bumpity in its holder until you go nuts and push it back into shape, a degree of annoyance that Angela had now almost attained.
-Rephah Berg, 2002

Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you've had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean.
-Jim Guigli, 2006

Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city, their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist breath through manhole covers stamped "Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J."
Gordon Spik, 2008