This is my entry for this week’s Postie Carnival; the topic is “what is your love story?” You can find more love stories at the Postie Carnival site. Not a Postie yet? Want to make money and have fun doing it? Click the PayPerPost button in my sidebar to sign up!
In 1984 I was a Junior in High School, and I went with my school Band to a regional competition. After the performances were over, while we were waiting for the buses, I was standing near two boys who were talking and joking around. One of them said something, I can’t remember what, but I remember I made some sort of funny comment that he could hear. We started talking, the three of us, and discovered that one of the boy’s Fathers was a college professor who knew my Mother. I gave him my phone number. He was not Chris.
That boy and I, Jay, dated each other for about six months. On Friday and Saturday nights, we would usually go into downtown East Lansing to hang out at this one hippie restaurant that had open mike night, and we could sit and drink root beer and eat the free crackers and no one would bother us. Jay’s friend Chris, and his OTHER friend Chris, would usually join us. We would smoke clove cigarettes, which we could purchase individually from the smoke shop next door to the restaurant. One night, I was watching Jay’s friend Chris E. take a deep drag on his clove and then blow the smoke out through his nose, and without even thinking I said “you look sexy when you do that”. And that’s when he says I went from being just a friend to being someone he was more interested in, even though he had a girlfriend at the time.
I have that girlfriend to thank for Chris being my husband today. The following year, she was a camp counselor for the summer, so Chris and I had been hanging out together. It was completely innocent-we would rent videos, walk around downtown, meet up with other friends. But then his girlfriend asked him to drive several hundred miles to the camp to see her, where she proceeded to break up with him, and break his heart. He drove straight home and called me.
Now, at that point, I had still been thinking of him as a friend. But as he poured his heart out to me, I began to feel something deeper. As the weeks went by, my feelings for him began to change, in that way they so easily do when you are 18 years old and the possibilities are endless. We had never kissed or even hugged that much, but I felt myself pulled to him in a way that was fierce and undeniable. Which is why one night, as he was driving me home from his house, I told him that I thought there was someone I could really get serious about, but I wasn’t sure how to go about telling him. “You have to just tell him”, Chris said, obviously thinking I was talking about someone else. “Just tell him so he knows, and then it’s up to him what to do from there. If he is smart, he will want to be with you.”
We pulled into the driveway, and I sat there for a minute, gathering my courage. Then, in one movement, I grabbed my purse, turned to Chris, said “I LOVE YOU”, kissed him on the cheek, threw open the car door, and RAN into the house, my heart pounding. He later told me that he sat there in the driveway stunned, debating whether to get out of the car and ring the doorbell, but then deciding against it, knowing that my parents would not have wanted any sort of love drama going on in their house. Instead, he called me when he got home. “What you said, in the car? Did you mean it?” Me: “Yeah, I did”.
And that was how Chris and I became a couple, in the summer of 1985, almost 22 years ago. We have been together, except for one very brief period where I said I wanted to date other people because my parents were pressuring me, ever since. I don’t know how I managed to find the one person who was absolutely right for me, how I picked the right man when I was so young, but I did. He doesn’t drink, gamble, cheat, abuse, belittle, disrespect or take for granted either me or our children. He is stable, trustworthy, generous, and loving. I can’t even imagine what my life would be like now if all those different forces hadn’t come together that day at the band competition. I could have stood somewhere else, or not been there at all, he could have stayed with his girlfriend, etc. etc. Instead, we were brought together, and it is right, and perfect, and it is my love story.
miracle21 
Wow, that’s just so sweet. I’d love to see some pictures of you back then!