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Tuesday, September 14, 2010  

Hey Nineteen

The year I was nineteen was one of the worst and best of my life. It was my first year of college, and it wasn't going the way it's supposed to on TV and in the movies. I had lost touch with most of my high school friends and didn't seem to be making new ones. I was bored, lonely, I looked like hell, and that winter was so cold and so long and penetrated so deep into my soul that for a few weeks I was virtually dreaming in Russian.

The symbolism of what happened to me during one day of spring quarter couldn't have been more obnoxiously on the nose. Walking from one bank of campus to the other, I spotted a girl sitting on a low wall, trying to read the Minnesota Daily and having a bit of a time with it due to the wind and the sun's glare. I decided to rescue her from that by sitting down in front of her and making her talk to me instead.

I wasn't just being creepy, because this wasn't the first time I'd met this girl. In fact, I knew her pretty well. We'd gone out together a few times in high school. I'd even kissed her. Which, considering how beautiful and cool this girl was, was probably more than I ever should have hoped for. Even though things never really got off the ground with her, I still missed her every day, and was always hoping to run into her on campus. On this sunny spring day, I was just being greedy. But I still felt special just being around her.

We parted ways that day, and I was happy that I'd gotten to hang out with her for a bit, and even happier that maybe I'd know where and when to "run into" her on campus in the future.

That evening she called me at home and said that because she had enlisted in the Navy and was leaving in six weeks, she just had too many people making demands on her time. Too many friends who wanted to hang out. And she didn't want her last weeks to be overscheduled. She wanted to spend what time she had left with people who really mattered to her.

"I get it," I started to say.

"That means you," she said.

I hadn't gotten it at all.

I got to feel special all that summer, as we spent more and more time together, and when her Navy placement fell through and she got to stay home. By the end of that summer, we were dating.

Nineteen turns out to have been a lucky number for me. Two and a half years after that spring day, I got to kiss her again. While wearing a tuxedo, in front of a church. Today is the nineteenth anniversary of that day.

Thank you, Trash, for an amazing nineteen years. The last nineteen, I mean.

posted by M. Giant 5:33 AM 3 comments

3 Comments:

That is so sweet.. Congrats to both of you

By Anonymous Anonymous, at September 14, 2010 at 10:19 AM  

You guys are the best, you know that? Sometimes I think about those days, and we (well, mostly I) were a gang of (or, one huge) freakin' idiot(s). But it kind of *IS* the way it's supposed to happen, according to TV and movies. Your part seems that way, anyhow.

I was amazed and a little confused at how anything could be that awesome then, and it's the same now. You rock. I love you two.

(And your kid is cooler than the both of you, but you knew that.)

(Recaptcha word: 'adhugs.' HA!)

By Blogger Febrifuge, at September 14, 2010 at 11:48 AM  

Awww - what a great story! Happy 19th.

- JeniMull

By Anonymous Anonymous, at September 14, 2010 at 12:09 PM  

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