Just for fun, I thought I would include our story. We met in college. Short story.
Just kidding! For those who want to read more, here’s how it happened.
J was in ROTC and getting a physical therapy/education degree and I was working on my Masters in Applied Social Research. My work-study position was a teaching assistant for two great professors, one in the Social Research dept doing the usual proctoring, grading, recording, etc and the other was in the physical education dept assisting in a folk dance class. J had a roommate that was in that PE class, who cajoled him into taking the “easy A” and needing more PE credits for his major, he agreed. That roommate and I were friends.
I was teaching one type of dance and J was a student in that class. He was very good friends with the instructors son. As a TA, I needed a good review, so I never thought of correcting the teachers’ son – or J by association. They were quite the class clowns. I actually have been quoted as saying that J was obnoxious. As I tended to just ignore those guys, J is quoted as saying that I was stuck up. On our first night’s performance I asked the roommate for a ride, as I did not have a car at University. The roommate said sure, and when I went to get in the car – I found out that roommate and J had also decided to ride together and roommate climbed in back seat leaving me sitting next to J and sharing 4 feet of breathing space. I felt I had to be nice and talk to both of them. That is probably the first time J and I ever spoke to each other.
I hung out with roommate a bit between classes when I was on that side of campus, and saw more and more of J. I would sometimes see him in his fatigues for ROTC, and thought it was nice he was planning on going into the military to serve. We would talk friendly enough, but not really more beyond hey or how’s such and such class going. One night, I was with roommate getting ready to hit the town when J walked through in his fancy dress uniform for the ROTC Ball. Wowza! He looked great, and I said something along the lines of, if your date get hits by a bus, call me. We all kind of laughed it off and went out our separate ways.
About ten o’clock I get a phone call. I pick up and J is on the phone, he says, did you mean what you said earlier? I said, mean what? My date got hit by a bus, want to go see a movie or something? I may or may not have said who is this. We talked it out and I agreed to go hang out with him for an hour or so and get the story. I hung up and went frantically running through the dormitory to my best friends’ Laura’s room and begged her to go along with me. I didn’t really know J all that well and I was not going out alone with him. Little did I know, J felt the same way and was draggin one of his best friends’ Sean out the door at the same time. The four of us met at the dorm lounge and headed out to BW3 (what it was called then). We ate, talked, and laughed a lot. Headed back to the dorm, said see ya later, and parted ways.
J talked to me in class that week, and we started talking more as I was hanging out with roommate between classes until I was mostly exclusively talking to J. We went to the movies a couple of times and a couple of the bars by campus with groups of friends. Our talks sometimes got serious about what we were looking for in life and the future. J going in the military had a pretty good plan, I sort of wanted a certain job, and was tired of just playing around. By April we were a thing, meaning we decided to only date each other, and we tested that over the summer when we lived in two different parts of the state. It lasted, and I went to work while J finished his last year of University.
Later I will share the engagement story….and just maybe scare up a picture from that time frame
, but there are a lot of combinations that would look great at the AKL or Poly.
