We all have those moments in life. Those moments where you get one shot, and only one shot to get it right, and if you get it wrong, the rest of your life will be the worse for it. Or, you could be like me. I got my Big Moment wrong, but it somehow ended up right anyway.

My Big Moment was nine years ago today, when someone asked me where I went to high school. My response was to look at her like she had 12 heads.

A little exposition: I was in some fancy bar in Boston’s financial district. A bar I had never set foot in prior, a bar I have never been in since. It was a Monday, and I was there for some local film-industry event. I had a pocket full of business cards from IFF Boston. I was there to schmooze, to talk about the film festival, then in its fourth year.

I have always been a terrible schmoozer.

While I was there, not schmoozing very well and nursing a bottle of beer, a girl began talking to me. She seemed nice enough, in a “whatever” sort of way. She wasn’t talking about anything remotely related to film production or the festival, and I was looking around for my friend who had come to the event with me. I didn’t see him.

Questions came rapid-fire. I answered each one, patiently if unenthusiastically. Finally came the question: “where are you from?”

“Pennsylvania. Right outside Harrisburg.”

And then it came. The Big Moment.

“Where did you go to high school?”

The question came not from the girl who’d asked all the other questions. It came from her friend, who’d sidled up sometime in mid-interrogation. As noted previously, my response was to look at her like she had 12 heads. If life were like a comic strip, the following thought bubble would have appeared above my head:

What the hell do you care where I went to high school? I just said I was from Pennsylvania. This is Boston.

After an uncomfortable silence, she answered her own question, helpfully, as if to prompt a response: “I went to Bishop McDevitt.”

Is this a quiz? I thought to myself. I’ve heard of Bishop McDevitt. Is that a place I shot a basketball game a couple years back? No, that’s not–  Wait. McDevitt. That’s in Harrisburg. She went to high school in Harrisburg. That’s why she’s asking!

“I went to Cumberland Valley.”

—

Over the course of the next several minutes, we dated, got married, moved to Virginia, had four kids (two at a time), lost jobs, moved again to Illinois, and now I’m sitting in my blue chair, sipping coffee, listening to my kids play in the next room and wondering where in the blazes nine years went.

All because I screwed up the Big Moment.