Ten years ago today, I met my husband. Y'all bask in the glory that was me at 18 & him at 24:
OK, you can quit laughing now.
It might not be immediately obvious, due to the wicked cropping job I did, but we met at a wedding. (That white splotch there on the right is the bride.)
It is a source of near-endless amusement that we outlasted that couple. (I know, one shouldn't laugh at things like that, but the two never should have gotten married in the first place, and pretty much everyone told them so. But that's a whole other story.)
Anyway, the story as I tell it goes like this. Billie Jo Hesskew (that's her arm there on the left) and I had gone outside to get something out of my mother's car, and when I stood up he was standing there against the wall of the building and I glanced at him and saw blonde hair and high cheekbones and though to myself, "Well, if nothing else I can amuse myself by looking at him all day."
Turns out he was thinking much the same about me.
My best friend Mark also happened to be at the wedding, and he will frequently laugh at the both of us and how we spent a couple of hours pussyfooting around each other before getting down to talking, and apparently spent much of that time staring while trying for it to not be obvious. Pretty typical stuff for people as young and shy as we both were, I guess.
But eventually he asked me to dance and that was pretty much the end of that. We were inseparable for the rest of the night, except when we were all linedancing & for some reason he kept hiding behind a potted palm.
This being a redneck wedding, at some point it was decided that the whole wedding party plus the bride's brother (who, incidentally, was my ex-boyfriend) should go out and rent a hotel room somewhere and get our drink on. Which was actually kind of funny, since not only were most of us underage we weren't exactly a bunch of partyers. It basically turned into BJ getting bored and going home & Wayne (my ex) and Eligio (the other groomsman) drinking heavily whilst the newlyweds, Rob, & I watched some crappy movie.
We spent most of that night lying awake & talking, and we spent all of the next day together as well, the highlights of which included meeting Robert's mother and taking Scooter (the groom) to his probation meeting.
It also included what is still my favorite story: After we picked Christina (the bride) up from her job at Taco Bell, Robert, while driving, quipped that he only had about four braincells left--two of them were asleep, one of them was thinking about sex, and that left him only one to drive with.
He then promptly rear-ended a vanload of illegal aliens. (No, I am not embellishing.)
The next day he was supposed to leave early to start the drive back to Groton, but delayed the trip for a while so we could spend more time together. I wrote my address down for him but honestly didn't think he'd ever get back in touch.
Obviously, I was wrong.
This last day was a Tuesday, and on Thursday or Friday I talked to him briefly on the phone over at Christina's mother's house because he wanted to let me know he'd made it back to Connecticut safely. Two days after that, I called him up to talk to him. This doesn't sound like a big deal, but I have serious phone issues. I don't like calling people I'm related to, so for me to call someone who was basically a near-stranger was a huge deal.
The day before my brother's birthday (or the day of, I sadly no longer remember exactly), which is the 16th September, I told him I loved him because by then I did.
So basically, we met and we were off like a rocket and now it is ten years later and we have three kids (plus the one on the way) and even though we are fighting a lot lately I have only grown to love him that much more. Sometimes it really is that simple.
(I know, I know, get back to ya when we've got the 40+ his parents do. Still, 10 years ain't half bad. It's certainly some kind of a record in my family--Scooter's my cousin, for example.)
2 comments:
May you 2 have 5 more 10 years ;)
What a sweet story!
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