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- Story Listed as: True Life For Adults
- Theme: Love stories / Romance
- Subject: Love / Romance / Dating
- Published: 06/03/2021
How We Met
Born 1960, M, from Orange Park, FL, United States.png)
It was our senior year of high school Nineteen Seventy-Nine. I was invited on a blind date with you, a girl from a rival high school. Who could have guessed such a disastrous night would result in a life journey such as ours? You thought me quiet and disinterested. I thought you boisterous and prying. Two people whose personalities, differences, and outlook on life could not be more dissident. One, an introvert with a paralyzing fear of crowds, the other an extrovert who would walk carefree into a crowd of rough and tumble bikers just to query whether they wore black due to its slimming effect. My mantra then as now “M.Y.O.B.” or “Mind Your Own Business”, yours “Hi!” or “Why aren’t you telling me your life story?”. On that first date it seemed your life ambition was to bring me out of my shell, even if it meant forcibly prying it open with a crowbar!
It was a double date with you, and one of my friends who was dating one of yours. Throughout the night you would interrupt the group conversation by casually asking questions of me, though totally unrelated to the core conversation. Questions about the one thing I cared least to talk about, me. As I thoughtfully pondered how to answer each without doing that which is most fearful to an introvert, “making a fool of myself”, you would immediately resume the groups original topic leaving me, mouth agape and bewildered; and just when I had formulated the perfect answer! Your timing was impeccable!
It was then I first realized you did not believe in the sentiment “Patience is a virtue!”; and yet through all this admittedly, I stood in awe. I had not only never met anyone like you, but I had not even imagined anyone like you! I had been on a blind date or two before and inevitably walked away saying something like “She was nice and all, but…”. With you I walked away confused, thoroughly exhausted, and wondering what in the hell just happened? Afterwards, when asked how the date went, I stood frozen like a deer in headlights and after a long evaluative pause answered, “I don’t know!”. Later, what would become even more bewildering to me is when I heard myself ask you out again!
At that age when I had perceived something as going wrong it was inevitable adults would offer these words of wisdom; “You may not realize it now, but these are the best times of your life!”. I would casually give them a nod all the while thinking; “Scariest, most confusing perhaps, but how could they possibly be the best?”. Now that I am older and perhaps a little wiser, I look at those times through a more nostalgically imbued lens, and think to myself yes, those were the best times of my life. Not because they were filled with fewer uncertainties or inherently less demanding, but because it was when you came into my life and restored that part of me, I did not know was missing. You are all that I am not, an enigma of confidence and enthusiasm, carefree yet thoughtful to a fault. Even today, though my imagination often runs away with me, the one thing I find impossible to imagine is my life without you in it.
And so, our journey began, two people more kids than adult, striking out, not on the adventure of a lifetime, but on a lifetime of adventure. Even then knowing it was our destiny to not just grow up together but to grow old together!
I sometimes wonder what you saw in that quiet, overly serious young man of so long ago. What made you try so intensely to break through the veneer when others would, and had given up? Did you see something I was incapable of seeing in myself, or is it that we were simply meant to be together?
It has been more than forty years since the night we first met. As life so often does, it has offered us times of great joy and happiness, hardship, and sorrow. While it may be how we act in the most challenging of times which defines us, it is also when we are most likely to reach out to those closest to us for affirmation and support. It was during those times when I would look to you, for within your eyes I found the strength and the courage to persevere. Indelibly imprinted on my mind are memories of those moments, when by virtue of a smile, a look, a touch, an empathetic tear, you made me feel loved. Those are the moments, the fleeting, the inconsequential, that shall forever remain closest to my heart, and have made me love you even more.
And so today, as I am left to ponder the shadow of my youth, I look back with pride, for I need not be reminded of roads untaken, opportunities unseized, or hardships endured. Instead, I may reminisce as to the one decision in my life which foreshadows in depth and meaning all others. The one where I agreed to go on a blind date with the love of my life.
How We Met(Steven W Kimball)
It was our senior year of high school Nineteen Seventy-Nine. I was invited on a blind date with you, a girl from a rival high school. Who could have guessed such a disastrous night would result in a life journey such as ours? You thought me quiet and disinterested. I thought you boisterous and prying. Two people whose personalities, differences, and outlook on life could not be more dissident. One, an introvert with a paralyzing fear of crowds, the other an extrovert who would walk carefree into a crowd of rough and tumble bikers just to query whether they wore black due to its slimming effect. My mantra then as now “M.Y.O.B.” or “Mind Your Own Business”, yours “Hi!” or “Why aren’t you telling me your life story?”. On that first date it seemed your life ambition was to bring me out of my shell, even if it meant forcibly prying it open with a crowbar!
It was a double date with you, and one of my friends who was dating one of yours. Throughout the night you would interrupt the group conversation by casually asking questions of me, though totally unrelated to the core conversation. Questions about the one thing I cared least to talk about, me. As I thoughtfully pondered how to answer each without doing that which is most fearful to an introvert, “making a fool of myself”, you would immediately resume the groups original topic leaving me, mouth agape and bewildered; and just when I had formulated the perfect answer! Your timing was impeccable!
It was then I first realized you did not believe in the sentiment “Patience is a virtue!”; and yet through all this admittedly, I stood in awe. I had not only never met anyone like you, but I had not even imagined anyone like you! I had been on a blind date or two before and inevitably walked away saying something like “She was nice and all, but…”. With you I walked away confused, thoroughly exhausted, and wondering what in the hell just happened? Afterwards, when asked how the date went, I stood frozen like a deer in headlights and after a long evaluative pause answered, “I don’t know!”. Later, what would become even more bewildering to me is when I heard myself ask you out again!
At that age when I had perceived something as going wrong it was inevitable adults would offer these words of wisdom; “You may not realize it now, but these are the best times of your life!”. I would casually give them a nod all the while thinking; “Scariest, most confusing perhaps, but how could they possibly be the best?”. Now that I am older and perhaps a little wiser, I look at those times through a more nostalgically imbued lens, and think to myself yes, those were the best times of my life. Not because they were filled with fewer uncertainties or inherently less demanding, but because it was when you came into my life and restored that part of me, I did not know was missing. You are all that I am not, an enigma of confidence and enthusiasm, carefree yet thoughtful to a fault. Even today, though my imagination often runs away with me, the one thing I find impossible to imagine is my life without you in it.
And so, our journey began, two people more kids than adult, striking out, not on the adventure of a lifetime, but on a lifetime of adventure. Even then knowing it was our destiny to not just grow up together but to grow old together!
I sometimes wonder what you saw in that quiet, overly serious young man of so long ago. What made you try so intensely to break through the veneer when others would, and had given up? Did you see something I was incapable of seeing in myself, or is it that we were simply meant to be together?
It has been more than forty years since the night we first met. As life so often does, it has offered us times of great joy and happiness, hardship, and sorrow. While it may be how we act in the most challenging of times which defines us, it is also when we are most likely to reach out to those closest to us for affirmation and support. It was during those times when I would look to you, for within your eyes I found the strength and the courage to persevere. Indelibly imprinted on my mind are memories of those moments, when by virtue of a smile, a look, a touch, an empathetic tear, you made me feel loved. Those are the moments, the fleeting, the inconsequential, that shall forever remain closest to my heart, and have made me love you even more.
And so today, as I am left to ponder the shadow of my youth, I look back with pride, for I need not be reminded of roads untaken, opportunities unseized, or hardships endured. Instead, I may reminisce as to the one decision in my life which foreshadows in depth and meaning all others. The one where I agreed to go on a blind date with the love of my life.
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