Boy and Girl now
Girl and Boy then
Part One in our love story. I realized some day I may grow old and feeble,
or maybe just one of our kids will want to know how this great love got started,
and so I had better get the details down. This is how we met.
I kept my eyes on the doors as the students of Introduction to Linguistics (LANG 330) scurried into the tiny, stuffy basement room of the Benson Building at BYU. It was the start of a new semester, Winter 2008, and I was looking for something to spice up the new year. My carefully, purposefully, selected seat in the middle of the farthest row, with my back to wall, was perfect for scoping out the entire class for people I might already know, or better yet, people I wanted to get to know. A quick glance at the clock told me that the bell was about to ring, and so far I only had one or two prospects for study buddies. Then the bell rang and I leaned back in my seat, and, having already determined there wasn't much that was interesting about this class except for the actual material, turned my attention to the professor at the front.
Suddenly, the door in the back of the room burst wide and the opening hinges revealed a flustered mess of a man. Oh but he was a beautiful mess! His thick, dark curly hair drooped with sweat and clung to his chiseled face, which stood out strongly against his black Carhartt coat. He was out of breath and obviously out of sorts, and as he pushed his way to only remaining seat, I was sure glad that last desk was in the front row. It was then that I realized my mouth was open.
Promptly, I snapped it shut, but I couldn't stop a smile from reaching cheek to cheek on my face. And as this beautiful mess shed his big, heavy coat, down dropped that mouth again. I was in love with every inch of that poor discombobulated soul. His thick, broad shoulders, the rolled up the sleeves on his blue striped button-up, his heavy skater shoes, his eager, ready-to-learn attentiveness, thick lips, and innocent eyes. For the next 40 minutes, I quite openly admired his forearms, of all things. By the end of that first class I knew I had found my spice for the new year.
But he made me nervous. There was something different about him that interfered with my typical approach. It took two class periods for me to muster the moxie to sit behind him, and I only did so because I had solidly determined that if I didn't, I was going to be the biggest ninny that ever claimed to be a flirt. So to uphold my reputation to myself, I plunked down in a kitty-cornered-desk behind him and waited for something clever to come to mind so that I could finally tell him my name. I already knew his. I remembered it from roll call and then watched for it on the group sign-up list that was passed around on the second day, and when I found it, I put myself in whatever group he was in. Shameless!
Luckily, our professor had my scaredy-cat back and started the class by telling everyone to introduce themselves to the people around them and exchange contact information so we would have access to notes and assignments if we ever missed class. Then my heart stopped. HE TURNED AROUND AND SAID, "Hey, so let's do this. I'm Jeff." Later he told me that I looked as flabbergasted as I felt (he also told me that he has seen my mouth hanging open and the eager look in my eyes on the first day and had told himself to stay away-that girl was trouble. He was right, but thankfully I was too good-looking for him to ignore). After what seemed like 30 minutes I remembered my name and also that I was a seasoned veteran of this man-handling thing and that I need to play it cool or the beautiful mess would think I was slow in the head and gapey in the mouth. I proceeded to give him my name and some general contact information, like facebook- I knew he had a page, I had already stalked it- and pretended to act casually interested in doing homework with him sometime. Then, when class was over, I ran home and did a happy dance.
