It was all going pretty well until someone gave Chisolm the stapler he kept walking over to Sami’s desk to ask for. Sami and Chisolm met working at a small nonprofit in Birmingham right out of college. Because they worked on different programs on opposite ends of the office, they didn’t actually get to interact much. But Chisolm quickly found a solution in the form of the stapler (which he didn't have) sitting on Sami’s desk. So most days, usually after lunch at the end of the “Birmingham work day” (10:00am - 2:00pm, iykyk), Chisolm would sidle up to Sami’s desk and ask for her stapler. This would usually result in Sami showing Chisolm a bunch of memes he didn’t understand and him frantically looking up the context later (some things never change). Mostly, though, they just talked and laughed and didn’t work. So, naturally, when someone kindly but cluelessly offered Chisolm his own stapler so he wouldn’t have to walk across the office for one anymore, the plan was foiled. Eventually, Chisolm moved back to Tuscaloosa for law school and Sami kept working in Birmingham. The two had kept talking, so at the end of Chisolm’s first semester, he asked her to come to the law school’s holiday party. After that — outside of brief moves here and there — they spent most weekends trading places to visit each other until Chisolm graduated and moved to Birmingham too. During COVID, one of the ways Sami and Chisolm passed time was by playing a game where one person would play songs from old Now That’s What I Call Music! CDs so the other could try to name the song and artist. Sami, in turned out, has a near-photographic memory for this exact thing and regularly named 95% of the songs. Chisolm, on the other, had to be educated about such things as the name of each Spice Girl. COVID was terrible for plenty of reasons. But one silver lining is that Sami and Chisolm realized how happy they were spending basically every waking moment with the other. And, in fact, that's pretty much what happened. Chisolm finally proposed on a cold day last February, but only after making Sami spend hours helping him pick out new clothes (which he had never before suggested doing, ever) so that her family could set up their house for the party afterward. To say it was a surprise would be a lie, but she said yes nonetheless. And here we are!