Ha! He Married Me!

So I read some posts on "How I Met My Honey" hosted by ramblingsbyreba.com. I decided that I wanted to play along, too. I like coming out to play.

Let me just say that I was no longer in my 20's when I met the love of my life. In fact, I was a good couple of years into my 30's. I had longed to be married and have a family in my mid-twenties but God had a different plan for me. Over time, I figured that marriage wasn't going to be a part of that plan. Still, I believe God's promises for my life, I trust Him in all I do; and I still stand firmly on Jeremiah 29:11 - For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

With that being said, at the same time I moved to the West Coast, the GID moved to the West coast. We lived a one & half miles from each other on the same street for the first couple of years. I road the bus my first year on the west coast and during that period he had a funny part-time job standing on a street corner, dancing with a sign. I passed him every day for a month. I remember the character dancing on the corner. Then as quickly and easily as our paths unknowingly crossed, time moved us in opposite directions. This is our story.

How I Met the Guy-I-Dig, a.k.a. GID (My Honey)

In the late winter of 1997 a long-time friend called me and asked if I was interested in working part-time on the weekends at a local theme park as a DJ. By this time I had moved from the entertainment industry to non-profit but I had actually been pondered a second job temporarily to bring in some extra income. I just didn’t want anything stressful on the weekend. She gave me a name and number of an old friend of hers that she had been working with for several years. So I pulled out my acting head shots, quickly updated my acting resume and sent them on their way – forgetting that I ever did any of this.

[and this is LONG before baby-brain.]

Months later, I arrive home from work and check phone messages, a guy left a message regarding working for him at K&P Productions? [What? I have a job, it’s a little late to call me now, I’m in non-profit, I don’t want to go back to entertainment – I’m HAPPY!] So a couple weeks I finally get around to calling him back as a courtesy; after all he found someone else, I’m sure. Within moments I realize my mistake, we immediately hit it off bantering back and forth and we end up on the phone for about an hour. Finally he says, “So you want to check out what I do?” I respond, “Sure.”

“My only concern,” he continues, “is that you may not fit under the umbrella we have set on the stage…” What? Great, silent confusion sets in. “Well it says here on your resume, that you are 7 feet 5 inches tall.” D’oh!!! I’m so glad we were on the phone at that moment.

A week later I entered the theme park with a pass to meet this guy. As I walked around the picnic area, he came walking up to me, clipboard in hand, ball cap on head [I love ball caps on guys] and dark sunglasses, “Are you Rose?” He shook my hand and - I have to say reluctantly – I felt something. A spark. A moment. The annoying clichés of all my friends words chiming -When-you-least-expect-it,You’ll-know-when-it-happens Meet through-a-friend - words rushed in; for just a second.

Nah. I shook it off. I was fairly jaded by this point.

A week after that, I was standing in a parking lot of a restaurant below the theme park entrance. He pulls up in a green Jeep Cherokee [cool] to guide me to the employee parking area, he isn’t wearing sunglasses. He has gorgeous green eyes. That was late June 1997. I started working with him on a weekly basis. It was pure fun. Weeks went by and I started dating some men through church and friends, suddenly they were all around so I thought, What the heck. Why not have fun! I hadn’t dated anyone for *gulp* ten years! At all.

They were all Christians, they were all nice but they were all wrong. During this time that guy I work with talked to me more often, he would say things, do things, look at me and I would tell a friend after each of these incidents to get her objective opinion because it seemed as if he liked me. I became slightly confused. During that time, I also learned he was newly divorced and had a 7 year old son; eek, complications. Not to mention that fact that we were “geographically undesirable” for each other, as I would later learn from him. We lived 25 miles apart – in traffic that is about 45 minutes to an hour on any given weekday. Then during an evening phone conversation he asked me about my date, I told him that the person wasn’t right for me and I had no interest in seeing him again. He (overly-happily) exclaimed, “Good!” Wait -What? “I didn’t like his name.” he added. Okay, I responded verbally as I thought –I think he really likes me…

We began hanging out with a group of friends, impromptu dance parties, bowling nights, movies, museums. It was perfect; we were having fun without cares and stresses of dating. Then on one of those playful evenings as my girlfriend (the one that introduced us) and I were sitting at a stoplight late in the evening in a car behind him and his friend. Suddenly his friend got out, ran back and laid a kiss on my friend’s cheek! At the next stop light she returned the favor. She was close to the guy and his friend, she had known them for a quite a while. I was new to this group, but then she dared me to go kiss the guy (on the cheek of course)…

Oh yeah baby, remember those hot Indian-summer days, long past, when you would sit up in a tree fort or in someone’s basement playing Truth or Dare? I hated that game.

I took the dare.

We parked at the next stop; so I got out of the car, ran over to the driver side of his car where he had just stepped out and laid a kiss right on his…lips!!

The world spun.

I didn’t expect that. I heard him saying, “She kissed me!” in a giddy voice. I knew in that moment that I felt something for him. Everything suddenly became different. Only did he feel the same?

His busy season began to wind down but over the next few weeks, we talked on the phone and saw each other occasionally but no longer weekly. We played it safe, teased each other and secretly hoped for dating failure. The friend whom told me about him started dating his friend. (the 2 initiators of the kiss - mm, now we know why they did that...)

Shortly thereafter, we all spent Thanksgiving together since our families lived out of state. That night, as we took a walk after dinner, he took my hand and held it. Butterflies made an appearance. Later he asked me if he could call me and ask me out on a date. He called the next day. We went out the following Friday, December 3, 1997.

Over coffee that evening, he asked, “So, what do you want to do with your life?”

I thought it was over, no more dates. [Seriously, I'm not all that interesting - I don't keep 5-year plans on hand...] But he called the next day, and the next. Soon he became the “Guy-I-Dig” as the word “boyfriend” sounded so ODD coming out of my post-twenty-something mouth, and I became the “Gal-I-Dig” to him.

Two years, a couple of bumps, and one day later we were married. On Saturday, December 4, 1999. And I thought I would never get married…

But that’s another story.

Pictures: Top - Out and about with friends from left our dear friend and giver of beloved espresso maker, me, GID's friend from kiss-night, the GID, & beautiful girl that introduced me to the GID ( also from kiss-night and now happily married to each other with 4 children of their own!)
Second picture - Thanksgiving 1997, Im' in green and GID is on far left. Everyone in the photo was single at the time and now all are married with children! Oh, how time flies!