Damn, you are OLD. But I still love ya.

Dear Bobby,

Happy Birthday.

Today is your seventeenth birthday since I have known you.

Back when we first met, I certainly never thought I'd ever be saying that.

See, I didn't really like you much at first.

You came to class, the BEST class on campus, by the way, and you were way too cool to participate in anything.  You sat there, looking bored, wearing (for God's sake) a TIE (I mean really, who could possibly trust a guy who wore a tie to class?) and generally not paying much attention.

I thought you were smug.

I believed you to be arrogant.

I wanted nothing to do with you.

So, of course, you saw me as a challenge.

Oddly enough, you showed up in a bunch of my classes the following semester, too.  I'm still not exactly sure how that happened.

You stopped wearing a tie every day.  We had mutual friends.  You began to grow on me, just a little bit.

You kept inviting me over to you place to "study."

I turned you down.  I was highly suspicious.

Then you broke my watch one day, and the rest, as they say, is history.

So here we are, seventeen birthdays, two marriages, a divorce, two kids, a mortgage, and a lifetime of shared memories later.

And I was right.  You are smug and arrogant.  And I was totally right to be suspicious of your motives.

But you know what?

I love you just the way you are, and I can't imagine my life without you in it.