What can happen when an 80-year-old Dallas widower meets an 80-year-old Austin widow and they discover they have a lot in common? Several things, one right after another. They start emailing and texting each other, telling each other their stories from eight decades of living apart; then, in a matter of weeks, deciding to get married, and, soon after, resolving to tell a broader audience the stories they had been telling each other. Front and center is their courtship experience itself told through their emails, combined with Charles and Nancy’s separate accounts of growing up.

Charles details his parents’ attempts to polish him and wise him up about sex; his efforts to combat his social anxiety; stories about lassos, bullwhips, and crossbows; one disastrous bridge game and a biology science project gone wrong; and tortured therapeutic sessions with pediatric nurses, orthodontists, and dermatologists. Nancy’s separately chronicles her efforts competing at tennis, swimming, and singing; relationships that went nowhere; days as a civil rights protester; moments as a college prankster; slow-dancing with a boy wearing contact lenses; the family dog that ate a chicken; and her adventure at the laundromat. Finally, for those who are really thinking things over, wondering about the hereafter, a sobering fantasy of a final judgment day concludes this memoir.

Charles Francis Guittard is retired trial attorney and mediator; teacher, coach, and trainer; and author of I WILL TEACH HISTORY, The Life & Times of Francis Gevrier Guittard, the 3rd volume of a trilogy chronicling the life of a long-time professor of history at Baylor University.