Happy Birthday, AKMA!

Me, AKMA and Si at BloggerCon, October 2003, Harvard Law School.

I’d like to wish Reverend A.K.M. Adam — known on the ‘Net as “AKMA” — a happy 50th birthday!

I Owe AKMA Big-Time

I’d known AKMA for over a year when I met him in person at a cocktail party at the first BloggerCon conference back in October 2003. The cocktail party was restricted to only those people who had ponied up the US$500 for the paid portion of the conference; I was there to catch the free-of-charge sessions the following day. Since the cocktail party was filled with some serious bigwigs with whom I wanted to schmooze, I decided to use a tried-and-true trick for getting into places where I wasn’t allowed: wearing a dark suit, bringing the accordion and pretending to be the entertainment.

Armed with an accordion and a little white lie told to the guy minding the door at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, I got into the cocktail party without any fuss. The first person I ran into was AKMA. We had a good conversation during which time he performed a great number of introductions.

At one point in the conversation, he saw Wendy working her way through the crowd.

“Wendy!” he called out. “Over here!”

This was not good. Wendy was the coordinator for the conference and was probably the one person in the entire room who would know that I wasn’t supposed to be there. She made her way over to us, and it was too late to weasel out.

“Wendy, I’d like you to meet Joey. Joey, this is Wendy.”

“The Redhead Wore Crimson, I said, reciting the name of her blog at the time. I like your blog; it’s a good read.”

Luckily for me, she was in a good mood and decided not to kick me out of the party. The next night, I invited her to join a group of us for dinner, and the rest is history.

Simply put, AKMA introduced me to my wife, and for that I will be forever grateful. Thanks, Padre!

It was only fitting that AKMA should take part in our wedding ceremony. He gave what I believe to be the best homily I’ve ever heard at a wedding. The transcript is here, and I plan on posting the video in the next couple of weeks.

Once again, happy birthday, AKMA!