It was 1980 something...

I have a lot going on in the next few weeks and much to say but my head is swimming so I thought today I'd join in with other bloggers over at Kelly's Korner in telling the story of 'how I met my husband'.

Kelly has tons of readers and they are all ages but I think for the most part they are young. Er....younger than me anyway. But you know what? Couples who have been married a long time? They have a story too. We have a story. And in my head, most days I do not feel that far removed from the twenty year old girl I was when I met my hubs.

We met in college. Hubs is a Tennessee boy. I spent most of my growing up years in NJ although both of my parents are from out west. My dad was in the Marine Corps and we landed in NJ, he retired after we'd been there a few years and we stayed. My older sister had gone to college in Tennessee and was still living there and missing family which is what prompted me to look at schools down south.

Hubs and I had a history class together the first quarter of our sophomore year and he says he noticed me then. My roommate and I were both in the class so we'd come in talking and move to our seats and continue talking and he says he and his roommate (who was also in the class) thought I was pretty and they also thought I was unfriendly because I never talked to them in class. Hey, I was from NJ. And I'm not saying people from NJ aren't friendly but one of the first things I noticed when I got to Tennessee was that everybody talked to you, whether they knew you or not. It is something I love about the south still and now that I've lived a few
millionplaces I can see how he might have thought me unfriendly.

Anyway, he knew who I was and I knew who he was. Honestly, everyone knew who he was because he knew how to have fun. Lots of fun. Life of the party fun. I was in a sorority and he was in a fraternity so we were at lots of the same events too. Oh yeah, and he had a girlfriend. Anyway, we 'officially' met when one of my best friends started dating one of his best friends. He and the girlfriend had been on/off all year and were more or less 'off' when we met. Not completely but eventually. Obviously, because we're married.

It wasn't until the very end of spring quarter that my friend 'accidentally' left her keys at the fraternity house and asked me to go with her to pick them up. Hubs was there, out on the deck, sporting a black eye and a broken hand. The black eye was from baseball but the broken hand was from something else. See paragraph above regarding 'life of the party'. He asked me out on a date and I like to tease him and say I felt sorry for him, you know, black eye, broken hand... but I'm pretty sure it was the twinkle in his eye that made me say yes. We had our first date that next week.

We drove up to the mountains to a fire tower you could climb. Thinking back I'm not entirely sure you were supposed to be climbing there but college kids were always climbing that tower. On the way home we stopped at Dairy Queen because he was horrified to discover I had never in my life eaten a corn dog and he felt it was his duty to get me one.

We were very much on again off again the first year and a half but I did meet his family quite early on in the relationship. As soon as I left their house his dad told his mom that he knew I was the girl hubs would marry. And he did. 26 years ago this June.

Hubs grew up in a small town. When we got married we flew to our honeymoon destination and that was only the second time in his life my hubs had been on an airplane. In the next three months he will be in China, Kenya, South Africa, Turkey, Italy and blah blah blah for work travel....we have moved eight times, lived in five states, and spent six years living abroad. We sent our daughters a continent away to university. We have friends from coast to coast and coast to coast. Literally. We have packed alot into these 26 years.

When you are starting out you think you know, more or less, where life will take you. We never in a million years imagined this life. But we did imagine that whatever God sent our way we would share it together. And we have. We may look a little older on the outside but on the inside?

We are still the kids who climbed the fire tower.