Why November 2nd is the best day of the whole year for me

When you live long enough, you wind up with a lot of dates that have significance to your past.

I was born on December 11th in the final month of the 1940s, I started dating the first girl I fell in love with on Dec. 13th in the final month of the 1960s.

As far as I can recall, that's the last time a date in December really mattered to me.

I started dating each of the two women I married -- consecutively, not concurrently -- in September (29th and 12th), and my first marriage -- aka "Dawn of the Dead" -- began on April 19th.

We got married a year before the Peanut Farmer was elected, and we split up a year before he lost to Ronnie. There's some significance there, but I've never been able to figure it out.

One other important thing happened that year. My daughter Pauline was born August 3rd, 1980, but since that was still 12 years before I met her mother, I wasn't aware of it. Ditto with my son Virgile being born on January 30th, 1985.

Nicole, November 1992

There were several other dates in the '80s that would have mattered a lot if the relationships they were involved with had worked out, but I'm getting old and dates are getting more and more difficult to remember.

December 12th, 1990, was one that mattered. That was the day my two-seater car was crushed by an 18-wheeler on the Santa Ana Freeway heading through Los Angeles.

By all rights, I should have died that day. The passenger side of my car was stomped so badly that the roof over the right-hand seat was roughly even with my waist. I was truly blessed that day, though. After my car was hit by two trucks, spun about 720 degrees and slammed against the guard rail, I opened my door and stepped out of the car.

That day pretty well cured me of complaining about my luck.

I figured I had been spared for something, and exactly 21 months later I met Nicole. She answered an ad I ran in a singles magazine, which is pretty much the only way a sportswriter was going to meet a world-renowned planetary scientist in the L.A. dating scene.

We met that day, were engaged by the end of the month and married at City Hall in Los Angeles exactly 51 days from the day we met.

Which brings us to the most important date of all -- November 2nd.

Today.

It took us 51 days to meet, get to know each other and get married. Today is our 21st wedding anniversary. I look at the picture from 1992 and I feel so damn old. When December 11th rolls around this year, I will be 64 years old.

I have picked up a couple of other dates that matter. My grandchildren's birthdays (September 19th and November 3rd), and my son- and daughter-in-law (end of May, beginning of June. Those I need to look up).

But November 2nd is the special one. We've made it through four presidents, three of whom served two terms. That's pretty good compared to the first one. Whenever I think about that, I'm reminded of a scene from "The Way We Were." Robert Redford's character is talking to his friend, played by Bradford Dillman. Dillman's marriage has ended, and when Redford commiserates, the friend says it's no great loss.

Then he points to Redford's marriage to Barbra Streisand's character and says, "Losing her, now that would be a great loss."

I know exactly what he meant.