Whew. It’s been a busy few days. Hubby & I drove home to Detroit last Thurs­day and just arrived back to Chicago tonight. Lots of fun things hap­pened dur­ing our trip home; of which I’d like to write in more detail. How­ever, I’m quite tired right now.

Instead, I find myself sit­ting on our couch watch­ing some World Cup soc­cer and enjoy­ing it immensely. The only thing I find highly annoy­ing are the darn horns; of which it sounds much like a non­stop remix of “Flight of the Bumblebee.”

Watch­ing the World Cup reminds me of when the tour­na­ment was played here in the U.S. back in 1994. And if you asked Hubby about that time period, he would no doubt tell you one of his famous “Emily” tales; one that usu­ally includes adding some embell­ish­ments to the actual story.

This tale includes a book bag, an impor­tant career-​​defining test, a Type-​​A gal (aka me ), and free tick­ets to see the U.S. play against Switzerland.

Back in 1994, I had just grad­u­ated from Nurs­ing School and was study­ing to take the Nurs­ing Boards (NCLEX) which would pro­vide me licen­sure to prac­tice as a Reg­is­tered Nurse. 1994 was also the first year that the NCLEX would be pro­vided to each can­di­date indi­v­d­u­ally on a com­puter. Prior to this, each can­di­date took the same stan­dard exam at a set date and time in an incred­i­bly huge room with the rest of the eli­gi­ble can­di­dates for that date. In addi­tion to tak­ing the exam on the com­puter, each exam would be unique; mean­ing that the test ques­tions would vary from per­son to per­son and … depend­ing on how you did, you could have a min­i­mum of 75 ques­tions, up to a max­i­mum of 265 ques­tions. Regard­less of how many ques­tions you ended up answer­ing, one could fail at 75 ques­tions or pass in 265 ques­tions. So need­less to say, I was quite ner­vous as I had no pre­vi­ous ref­er­ence to tak­ing these com­puter adap­tive tests.

This also meant that I took my study guide with me every­where so I could study at a whim. And back in 1994, lap­tops weren’t com­mon, iPhones weren’t invented with apps to assist in study­ing for these exams. Oh … and the inter­net wasn’t read­ily acces­si­ble to the gen­eral pub­lic; so for­get being able to google  for answers on WebMD or nih​.gov. Nope; this meant that on top of the study guide I’d take with me, I might just take one of 20 lb text­books for Pedi­atrics or Med/​Surg … depend­ing on what topic I wanted to study that day. And oh, did I men­tion that my study guide weighed about 10 lbs all on its own?

Any­way, less than a week before I was to take my exam, my then-​​fiancé called me up and told me that he had two free tick­ets to a World Cup match at the Pon­tiac Sil­ver­dome, com­pli­ments of his employer at that time. Ini­tially, I had told him that I wouldn’t go because I still felt I had so much more study­ing to do. Except, well … he wouldn’t take no for an answer. “Once in a life­time chance,” he’d tell me; fol­lowed by “you need to take a break from study­ing so much!” And, truth be told, he was right. I was THAT Type-​​A that I felt I couldn’t go a moment with­out study­ing for the NCLEX.

That’s how I found myself head­ing to the World Cup.  But because I still couldn’t let go of not study­ing at all, I also found myself tak­ing my 30 lbs back­pack filled with NCLEX study­ing mate­r­ial. I con­sid­ered it my “secu­rity blanket.”

Because of secu­rity rea­sons and traf­fic issues, the city of Pon­tiac required that all ticket-​​holders be shut­tled into the Sil­ver­dome from their down­town loca­tion. (And yet, I was allowed to take a huge back­back in then … Wow, life pre-​​9/​11!) So the day of the game, Then-​​Fiancé and I stood in line with another coworker and his girl­friend wait­ing to catch a 15-​​minute shut­tle ride to the venue. And once we got there, we were so enthralled with the inter­na­tional atmos­phere and into the game which ended up in a 1:1 tie.

After­ward, we found our­selves amidst 70,000-plus peo­ple try­ing to catch a shut­tle back to down­town Pon­tiac. Oh, and did I men­tion it was 90-​​some degrees out­side that day? It must have taken us more than an hour just to get onto a shut­tle and, because of sur­round­ing traf­fic, an addi­tional half hour to get back down­town. But the kicker of it all was … that entire time, I did not once open up my back­pack to study.

Stryker, the 1994 World Cup Mascot

Instead, the won­der­ful man (that I even­tu­ally mar­ried) ended up car­ry­ing my 30 lb secu­rity blan­ket the entire time … while I “absorbed” all the infor­ma­tion by osmosis.

He’s such a good guy, my hus­band … and even though he’d likely tell his side of this story by adding an addi­tional 50 lbs worth of study mate­r­ial, I am most grate­ful for all the won­der­ful things — big or small — that he does for me on a daily basis.

And reflect­ing back on this tale? Well it just reminds me that even back before our lives were immersed in the world of Infer­til­ity … that my won­der­ful hus­band was always there to let me know when I needed to come up for air and take a breather.

I guess you can say that I scored big by mar­ry­ing such a won­der­ful man. And that we make a per­fect match.

Okay, I’ll stop it with the lame soc­cer terms. More inter­est­ing posts com­ing soon … I promise. But for now, it’s nighty-​​night!