5 years ago I was having a conversation with a buddy of mine about Valentine’s day and how I had a feeling I wasn’t going to be single that year when it rolled around. I had no idea I was being prophetic. My usual par for the course was hoping that was going to be the case but either screwing up that hope by doing something stupid (you know that scene in Tommy Boy with the roll in the diner, yeah something like that), or I would chicken out and end up at home watching movies. I am kind of a romantic at heart, and a good number of my friends were married, had kids, the whole nine yards. I hadn’t had a girlfriend since grade 9 when having a girlfriend meant maybe kissing but mostly just a girl you would hang out with.
Candace was an amazing woman, she had the power to make me calm about talking to her. She is gorgeous, and funny, and kind of a nerd (and if you know us you know why that is a-ok and kind of attractive to me). Going for coffee with her one night after Bible study clinched it for me. I knew if I didn’t ask her out I deserved to be single for the rest of my life. I would love to be overly romantic and say that even then I knew she was the one (she was after all) but truthfully I was more just blown away that she was so comfortable with me and actually seemed to enjoy talking to me (for the record I think I managed to avoid talking about comics, movies, and TV for the first while, and I didn’t get really geeky with her until after we were married and she couldn’t escape)
I asked her out, she said yes and on Feb 10, 2001 we went on our first date, although I had made the mistake of asking her, “to a movie or something” and forgot to say the word “date” and both of us weren’t sure what was going on. Thankfully she dressed for a date, otherwise I am not sure what would have happened. On our first date we went to “Finding Forrester”, and to this day I am not really sure if Forrester was found or not, I was to busy being unsure as to whether I should try to hold her hand, or y’know cough and put my arm around her or something. We went to Denny’s after for dessert… and then I started to have problems.
There was a Cinderella factor to our first date. I had been sick that week, really sick and I didn’t want her to know about it and sympathetically have her cancel out and blow my first date in… how long had it been?… ever. So I took some Nyquil daytime and prayed for mercy. It turned out that I was on a six hour clock because like a nervous idiot I left the Nyquil on the counter and headed out the door. As we sat in Denny’s talking I could feel this nasty cold coming back. My sinuses started to fill up, my eyes started itching, I began to have to swallow hard. I began to freak out a bit. What was I going to do. I hadn’t told her I was sick, and that I felt as though perhaps I was going to be late for a second date that evening with a fellow who accessorized with large gardening implements. To the best of my recollection Denny’s went fairly smooth and didn’t feel rushed but by the time we got in the car I was feeling pretty rough…
Focus through the headache, you like this girl, focus…
By the time we got to her place (which was only a scant 5 minutes away) I was seriously hurting and she still had no idea… almost home, just gotta drop her off… we said our good nights, both of us had a good time, she smiled at me when she left, that was a good sign... I smiled too, although it hurt to do so my head was swimming so bad…
The actual dropping off went less than totally smooth, It felt after as though there was a possibility the car had not come to a complete stop when she got out. My ruse was almost complete… only a couple more second. We agreed to get together later that week and I left as quickly as I could and I knew by then she had perceived something was wrong and I prayed she didn’t think it was her. I wanted everything to be OK. I came clean during the next week… but that is a whole other story…
TO BE CONTINUED…
No comments:
Post a Comment