Our Holiday Story

Jo Ammer and Chris Eiker are celebrating their first Christmas together, they going to Arbor to spend it with her father and stepmother, Dave and Nell Ammer, with his parents joining them on Christmas Day, Jo and Chris who have never met the other's parents. So Chris is feeling awkward as at the last minute Jo informs him that she has to take a later train to Arbor, leaving him to meet her parents on his own. In that awkwardness, Chris ends up asking Dave and Nell what Jo was unable to tell him not to ask: how they met. Dave and Nell proceed to tell him a complex story from ten years ago of having an immediate attraction upon first sight, for Dave what he still considers love in being a slightly scattered and easily distracted personality who works on emotions - she, conversely, goal oriented in working on evidence - but subsequently having a series of missed opportunities, they knowing little about the other, initially not even the other's name, in what town he/she lived (in they having met on a train), or contact information. What they didn't know at the time was that they had an adversarial relationship on-line solely knowing each other as David Ammer and Eleanor Spear, whereas in person, they, when learning the other's name, only knew each other as Dave and Nell. Beyond what happened when they discovered that Dave/David Ammer and Nell/Eleanor Spear were the same people, the story contains some unstated advice for Chris and Jo, who have not yet said to the other "I love you", one who is uncertain in not knowing what love truly is.