Well, it’s February 29, Leap Day, 2020 and I thought I’d do something a little different. 
A Leap Day only comes along every 4 years and for those people who celebrate their Birthday today, I say Happy Birthday. It is not my wife’s Birthday but the story of how I met my wife is almost like being born on February 29th. The stars have to align and if one thing’s off then you miss it all together. That could have happened to me if things had gone differently. Luckily for me, my Leap Day, the day I met my wife all fell into place.
First off, I’m two years older than my wife and the odds we’d end up in the same place to even meet up are astronomical. But wait, we actually met before we met. Sort of. I’ll get to that in a minute. First, I moved into residence at Peter Robinson College, at Trent University in Peterborough in September of 1982. It wasn’t a great experience and I moved out of residence by the end of the month. Voluntarily moved out or asked to leave. Let’s not quibble. For the next two years of University life I lived off campus.
When I left residence I moved in a with family headed by a friend of my Dad. I think his name was Charlie. I don’t remember much else but I was sleeping on a couch in their basement family room so it wasn’t ideal. I then took a room in a house with a woman and her infant son. Her husband was working up north so I never met him. I do know that she make leak soup a lot and sometimes I ended up watching her son. I think that lasted a month before I moved into an apartment on the other side of town. 
It was a two bedroom apartment and I advertised for a roommate. I can’t remember the name of the guy who moved in with me but it was a bad fit. He was creepy and irresponsible and we had no chemistry. Even Oscar and Felix had chemistry of a sort. I think that it might have been another month then I kicked him out. Then a nice guy named Tim moved in and we got along. He had a good looking sister named Maggie but that went nowhere. Tim and I weren’t really close however to being lasting friends and I never saw either of them again after that year.
I moved home to Belleville in the summer of 1983 after that first year was over. This is significant because I got a summer job working nights at Farrar’s Texaco in Belleville. The Texaco is long gone but at that time it was right across the road from Burger King. Burger King is still there. I used to start work at 11pm and worked until 7am. Sometime between 11 and midnight this good looking blonde young woman used to ride her bike across the road from the Burger King and passed by the back of the Texaco. I never talked to her but I’ll get back to her.
My second year of University wasn’t all the memorable either. I moved into a three bedroom apartment with two Asian students, Jack and Boo Huat. Jack didn’t speak much English so we never talked. Boo Huat had a different girl every night and by the end of the school year I think there were 3 other people living with Boo Huat in his room. Jack had a friend name Carrie that came by occasionally and he had gone to school in Belleville so I didn’t mind him. He, like Jack, was originally from Hong Kong. One night I came home to find the living-room full of other Asian students. Carrie was among them so when I asked what was going on, he replied that they were all there to watch “Love Boat” because the episode had been filmed in Hong Kong and they wanted to see home and possibly faces of people they knew. That was probably the longest conversation I had with any of them. I mostly kept to myself. I ate every night with Jack and Boo Huat and they made amazing Asian cuisine with rice every night. I lost twenty pounds. I used to sneak out to the local Harvey’s for a hamburger. I felt guilty but I needed some of my own type of cuisine.
Okay, so now it was the summer of 1984. I was back at Farrar’s Texaco but the blonde was gone. That summer I thought seriously about what I was going to do for accommodation when I went back to Trent in the fall. I had been lonely my first two years and had made no solid connections with anyone. I didn’t want to live off-campus anymore but moving back into residence was also a scary thought. I remember I had to apply to go back into residence and there was an interview with the Master of Peter Robinson. I wasn’t a big fan of the guy but I passed the interview and was granted a spot in the Reade House residence. Reade house had an East and West side with both upper and lower floors. I believe I was on the East side lower. I was the only third year student on my side. Most were first year students and a couple of second year students including our friend Glenda.
I should point out that Glenda was my wife Jeanette’s friend at the time but I hadn’t met Jeanette yet. Jeanette and Glenda had been on the other side of Reade House in their first year but Glenda had been assigned a room on our side. I remember distinctly the first time I caught sight of Jeanette with Glenda. It was only a back-side view as they were walking away from Reade House toward the dining hall in another building. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t looking at Jeanette’s behind but rather the back of her shirt. She was wearing a Burger King jersey that said “Belleville” on the back. She was the blonde who used to ride her bike behind the Texaco. I didn’t figure out that it was her until later on. Her parents had moved an hour east from Belleville when Jeanette was in her last year of high-school. She wanted to finish out her year at her Belleville school so she lived with Grandmother for the rest of the school year. Conveniently, her grandmother lived two blocks away behind the Texaco! After her first year of University she had moved back in with her parents to the east and that’s why I never saw the blonde in my second year.
I’ll make the story short from here. She and I hit up a friendship because we had both been from Belleville and because of the Texaco Burger KIng connection. 
If you look at the picture above, it’s the interior of that Burger King as it looks out today on North Front Street. The Scotia Bank (the big red structure with the white letter “S” on it) sits approximately where the Texaco used to sit. My wife is still a big fan of the Burger King original chicken sandwich. Me? Not so much. But I’m a big fan of my wife. Jeanette used to come over to visit Glenda and would always stop in to talk to me. Eventually Glenda had her own residence problems and moved out of Reade House. At that point, Jeanette just kept coming over to visit with me. Unfortunately she had a boyfriend at that time and I could make no in-roads with her…or so I thought.
I remember distinctly when I knew that things were swinging my way. We both went our separate ways at Christmas time. I remember being at home with brothers and playing cards on Christmas day. I had been bragging a bit about this girl and maybe playing up the relationship more than it was at the time. My brothers kept teasing me and saying if we were really a couple why hadn’t she called me yet on Christmas day. I kept saying “she’ll call, she’ll call.” Of course I had no idea if she would call. I was sure she wouldn’t but wanted my brothers to stop bugging me about it. Eventually a call came in for me and my brother Chris said it was Jeanette. I didn’t believe it. I thought I had been set up by the brothers. Not true. It was Jeanette. That was the moment I knew that maybe I had a shot with her.
After Christmas things moved slowly and awkwardly in January. I knew I loved her but she made no signs that the feelings were mutual. I started being surly towards her and then one day she got mad at me and walked away. I eventually followed her and we talked it out. She told me she loved me and wasn’t sure why I had been surly with her. I confessed my love and that I was only acting that way because I wasn’t sure if she loved me. It all worked out. It was Leap Day! Well not exactly because it was 1985 and not a Leap Year. But the stars had all aligned.
By the end of that school year Jeanette and I began talking about marriage and had tentatively set a wedding date for May 23rd, two years later in 1987. It seemed all kinds of foolish but we both knew we were right for each other. She had never felt towards previous boyfriends what she felt towards me. 
And I had never had a girlfriend because I hadn’t met the right girl. Two years of off campus housing and no connections with anyone and then I move back into residence only to meet the girl from Burger King. We eventually got married in 1987 but there we no venues available for May 23rd when we started planning. There was a cancellation at the Royal Canadian Legion for May 30th so we made it work. The picture above is of us dancing at the Legion.
So everything worked out and my Leap Day happened. If I hadn’t dropped out of residence in my first year and then had two uncomfortable and lonely years off-campus for the rest of first year and second year and if Glenda hadn’t been her friend, and if Jeanette hadn’t been the girl from Burger King and if Glenda hadn’t dropped out or if Jeanette hadn’t made that Christmas day phone call then none of this would ever have happened. Best day ever. Except it wasn’t really a day. It was a series of days leading up to that day she told me she loved me and more days leading up to the day I said “I Do.”
Below are some great photos of Jeanette and I leading up to that “I Do” day:
And here’s us now:
I’m so glad my wife took this leap with me!
Tags: Jeanette Henderson, Leap Day, Scott Henderson. False Ducks