The Story of Us

Fifteen years ago this spring, my husband and I went on our first date. He sat behind me all year in Mrs. S’s Sophomore Honors English class, and I could tell when he was concentrating really hard due to an increased intensity in his gum chomping. We exchanged relatively few words throughout the year, except to discuss class-related topics like which pages were due in the novel we were reading, or whether or not we needed an annotated bibliography for a research paper. (What can I say? We’ve always been big on the romance.)

I would like to say that I fell for his brains (he graduated with top honors, and I’ve always preferred smart guys, even at 16), but the combination of dark hair and green eyes with laugh crinkles didn’t hurt. He played football, and ran around with some of the same people I socialized with, but our interactions were mainly relegated to English class.

One day, I was complaining to my friend across the aisle about how far behind I had gotten in A Tale of Two Cities. (In my defense, it was basketball season, and I had after-school practice or games five nights a week.) J leaned over and handed me his copy of Cliff’s Notes. I don’t really remember that he said anything, just handed it to me. (For all I know, he just really wished I would shut up about the damn book.) I passed the final test for A Tale of Two Cities, and J and I broadened our conversations to include topics outside of participial phrases. However, not in the way one might imagine.

Instead of face-to-face conversations about music and movies and teachers and mutual friends, J began e-mailing me. At first, just three or four words at a time. This was back in the days of dial-up connections and AOL. I would rush home after cheerleading practice, boot up the computer, listen to the weea-weea-weea sounds of the modem, and then hold my breath until the e-mail screen popped up. If I heard “You’ve got mail,” my heart would jump into my throat with excitement. All for a message like, “How was your day?”

This went on for months, business-only conversations at school, and then the e-mails when I got home. I was really puzzled. Did he like me? Or did he just want me to return his Cliff’s Notes and was sending subliminal messages through cryptic e-mails? Finally, one day I decided to type out, “Maybe we should do something some time.” I quickly hit the send button before I could change my mind. I waited, and almost immediately, saw his earth-shattering response: “Okay.”

There was just one problem. My parents. They had this Draconian rule that anyone I was going to ride in a car with had to come to the house, have dinner, and meet the family. (Now that I’m a parent, this seems much more reasonable than it did at 16. I even think full criminal background checks will probably be in order when my kids start dating.) There was no way I was going to go through the humiliation of telling J that he had to come to my house before we could go out somewhere. So I did what all 16-year-olds do in these situations. I found the loophole. Instead of having him pick me up at my house, I told him to meet me in the parking lot of a local grocery store. I don’t remember that he ever questioned this, although it must have seemed like a strange request at the time.

I was almost 30 minutes late for our date. As I drove to the grocery store that night, my brain raced with the thought that he might have left. Maybe he thought I stood him up. But when I pulled into the parking lot, there he was. We saw a movie on that date, and while I can’t say that I knew that I loved him then, I was definitely in serious like.

We dated throughout high school, and then chose different colleges our senior year, making the mature, adult decision to go our separate ways and experience college life unfettered. (The actual truth is, I was too proud to be that girl who follows a guy to college, and I went away to school broken-hearted over this “mature” decision.) There were friendships to be made, flirtations to pursue, and relationships to explore (and I guess we studied somewhere in between). Two years passed quickly.

One night toward the end of spring semester in our sophomore year of college, we found ourselves at the same party. Some old, mutual friends were getting together to celebrate the coming of spring and the end of another school year. I was dating someone at the time, and for weeks after that party J would call my cell phone during the most inopportune times (Thursday night bar-night, Friday night date-night, Saturday night movie-night, you get the picture). He was nothing if not persistent, and it took its toll on the relationship, which ended. I still refused to go out with him though (I know this will surprise those who know me, but I can be very stubborn.) He persisted, and I finally agreed to Round 2 the following summer, more than a year after that party.

We dated another 2 ½ years until we were both graduated and gainfully employed. I was living and teaching in our hometown, and one day, J came over to my duplex, and handed me an old scrapbook that I had made of our high school and college days together. Puzzled, I flipped through the photos, old ticket stubs, and the cover from A Tale of Two Cities. At the very back of the scrapbook, a 1x1” square had been carved into the remaining blank pages, and inside the hollow opening was an engagement ring. It was the next chapter in our scrapbook.

On days like today, when the weather is still feeling spring-like, I often think about the decisions we made that led us to where we are today. At 16 and 21, you really don’t think about how the choices you’re making will shape your life going forward. What if Mrs. S had sat us across the room from each other in English class? What if I had been a model student and actually read A Tale of Two Cities as I was assigned to do? What if I had never agreed to go out with him again in college?

Some day, R and K (Okay, probably only K. Do boys care about this stuff?) may ask to hear the story of how we went from being J and S to being their parents. I hope they will identify with parts of this story as they go out into the world and make their own life-defining choices, and that they will recognize that their parents were young once, and felt all of the things that young people who are first falling in love feel. And I hope they will feel a connection and sense of understanding from us when they experience love and heartbreak, and that they will have the perseverance to persist when they find the kind of love worth persevering for.