Meeting the boy...

I "met" my boy the summer after my freshman year of college. I say "met" because I had known him in high school, but he was one of those boys that I never associated with: he looked like a slob, he was one of those smart slackers who never reached their full potential, and he was just a general goon. In short, he just wasn't boyfriend, or even friend, material for this overachieving, prejudiced high school student.

Despite being so prejudiced, I had gradually achieved the mentality prescribed by Molly Shannon's character in one of my favorite chick flicks of all time, Serendipity: after a loser buys a casanova candle from her New Age store, she says "That's what happens when people get involved with all that New Age crap--they spend the rest of their lives sitting at home burning candles for Mr. Right when Mr. Good-Enough-For-Right-Now is sitting at the local bar." Although I hadn't gotten to the point of burning casanova candles, I didn't want to be one of those girls who turns down perfectly good guys, hoping that my true prince would come some day. I had to accept that no man is perfect.

So, after my first failed attempt at dating, I became even more cynical than ever concerning love. A frequent blogger, I had just written a post about the non-existence of love when he came back in to my life. I had just started waitressing, and he and his friends came in just as my shift was ending one night. I figured that, since I knew them, I could be extra nice to them and earn a big tip for the night. So, I decided to stay late that day and serve them. How awkward. Me, the big nerd from high school--actually, still a big nerd--trying to flirt and be comfortable with four boys. I fucked up their orders (I had just started working there!) and was pulling at random memories from high school to keep up a conversation. And my efforts were wasted--they didn't bother giving me the complimentary friend-tip. I probably shouldn't have expected as much from college students, especially boys I didn't really know that well.

A few days later, he contacted me on AIM (lame, I know, but understand that you're listening to a nerd's love story). I still didn't know him, so I was just very polite and friendly... and we hit it off. I don't know what it was about him--maybe it was just something as simple as having a boy to talk to--but he had me hooked. In no time, I was looking forward to coming home from work every night at 11, just so I could stay up until 2am IMing him. I don't know what we talked about. Probably stupid shit like who was the best X-Man. I just know that talking to him made me happy.

We kept IMing for most of the summer. When we realized that there was only a month left and that we would both have to go back to school soon (I went to school an hour away from home, he went to school 5 hours away...), we started actually going on "dates," if you can call them that. As I remember them, they went a bit like this:

1. He told me he could tell time by the sun, so he invited me to visit him at work one day just to see his special powers. I found out later that he was lying and that he looked at a clock before coming outside with me. At least he made me a pizza. At least that was real!
2. We had two lunch dates with mutual friends, just to keep it less awkward. I could tell that his friends were giggling in their heads about us on the second "date."
3. He drove me around his elementary school and old neighborhood and ended the date with a Warhead battle. That's right. We ate Warheads to see who could keep a straight face. I wanted to impress him so bad that my tongue was peeling two days later. This was the one time I told my mom I was going out with a boy... She just got passive-aggressive and said, "So, you're hanging out with boys now?"
4. We had a real date the day before he left for school. It was so lame that I brought a book of weird questions just in case we ran out of things to say... I'm sure our waiter thought we were pathetic.

When we left to go to our respective schools, I expected this summer romance to end. But we kept talking. During my first week at school, we stayed up talking on the phone (not online! a big step!) and watching reruns of Fresh Prince until 3 or 4 in the morning... We would both start falling asleep at different times and had to keep each other awake. Toward the end of the week, I finally got the guts to tell him I liked him... and he said he liked me, too. I will always remember August 26, 2006 as day we officially got together.