Decoder rings have been around for a long time but I didn't have any help from them in the romance department. I think you find the person you will spend your life with mostly by chance.

Willette and I will celebrate our 50th year on Dec. 30. We met by chance. I was working part time at a newspaper office while in college, and she came out of high school and took a clerical job at the same place. Someone introduced her to me as "the new girl" and the rest, as they say . . . . .

But suppose I had never gone to that college? Suppose that newspaper job had never materialized? What if she had gone to college somewhere instead of entering the work force? What if I had been drafted? The odds are that we would never have met. We both might now be celebrating 50 years with somebody else, never knowing that the other existed. Pure chance. But it all worked out rather nicely.
Howard