How We Met: Part 2

**Warning: If you absolutely do not care at all how Tom and I met, abort post now. This one may be entirely too awesome for you.***

So where was I? Ah yes, drooling on the bleachers.

So the day of our first date had arrived.

Let me remind you of a few minor details: It was 2005, pretty sure it was March, Tom had seen exactly one picture of me, I had never seen him before in my life.

I was wearing my favorite black pants from Gap, a royal blue 3/4 sleeve shirt, I'm guessing some matching blue flip flops from Old Navy (because that's what I did in high school).

Tom was wearing a light blue and white button up rolled to his elbows (I now know because they were probably too short for his arms), khaki shorts, and white Nike sneakers with a navy blue swoosh. He was also sporting a backward facing navy blue Red Sox hat.

So he drove up the long, steep driveway to my parents' house, which I'm going to guess was kind of intimidating because you can never be too sure about steep driveways. What kinds of people build a house on top of a steep driveway? Do they not like visitors? Do they enjoy watching your lacking-in-four-wheel-drive car spiral downward on ice during the winter? Who knows.
So he knocked on the door (good sign right there--decided to forego the whole, sketchy, I'll wait for you in the car kind of thing) and met my parents first. I'm pretty sure my Dad let out a sigh of relief right about then. Oh--there's also something you should know--my Dad was definitely the clean-your-shotgun-in-front-of-the-boys type. And he cared about two things:
1: a good, firm handshake
and 2: getting me home on time (and by on time he meant at least 15 minutes early--and you had to realize this--without him telling you).

Where was I you ask? Deafly blow drying my hair of course. No idea Tom was there. Eventually my Dad called up to me over the balcony that I should come down--I'm guessing he strategically did not do this immediately after Tom arrived, but Tom seemed un-phased when I came down to meet him so all was fine.

When I reached the bottom of the stairs and turned the two corners into the kitchen, I was unsure if  I had transformed into an oompa loompa on my way down. Tom's head was levitating somewhere above the area where the doorways ended and I was beginning to think I misjudged the meaning of tall.

And so we were off. Our date was anything but boring, but written out minute-for-minute as a blog post, it might seem a bit...lacking. These are the highlights:

1. We saw Land of the Dead (I know what you're thinking--as a first date movie?? well...yup.)
2. We went on all sorts of little excursions having to do with things that I like--that he remembered from phone conversations from weeks previous.
3. He got me home at 10:30 with an 11:00pm curfew (I am almost certain my dad went to sleep with tears of pure joy streaming down his cheeks).

The next few weeks we saw each other more and more. Some mini golfing here, some Boy Meets World marathons there...you know, the yooj. (how do you abbreviate "usual" in writing? I have no idea, I just wrote it how I wanted). We lived off Tyson popcorn chicken and Ken's honey mustard (just the utterance of these two foods make us want to vomit now).

And then, came the time to DTR (Define The Relationship--MTV's Awkward, anyone??)....

Coming up on "How Amy Met Tom":

+Tom's profession of love
+Amy's Rejection

And a season finale sneak peak:

+The Engagement
+The Wedding
+"It's 2 lines!!!" "Are you sure? Take another one,"
+The C-Man's big screen Debut

And some random dating photos:

he liked me for me, not because I sang like......

How We Met: The Real Story Part 1

So if you saw my other post you might have been like wait? Did they really meet at band camp? Well, I hope that doesn't need answering.

Before starting this I said to myself how do you make a high school love story not sound lame? You don't. That's the beauty of it.

*   *   *   *   *   *

It was March (pretty sure about this) 2005 (definitely sure about this). I was sitting at my computer in my room, under the stairs (I had a loft--this isn't important) I was on my computer when *da-ding* "Will you accept a message from Tom'sScreenName? AIM chat in all it's glory. I accepted--who doesn't accept random chats from people you don't know?

His first words: "I know this seems so sketch, but..."

We had a mutual friend, he saw a picture of me, and got my screenname.  We're sounding pretty cool right about now, eh? Don't worry, we were a whopping 16 (me) and 17 (him) years old. This is what you did at 16 and 17 pre-Facebook. I chalk it up to the stellar hair I used to have (way) pre-baby. You can say you had good hair and not sound like a total ______ if you don't have the good hair anymore, right? You don't know what you've got til it's gone, you pave paradise and....where was I?

So we started talking and decided to meet on a blind date. I had no idea what he looked like, who he was, etc (before you get all panic-y, don't worry, my mom made a few calls to make sure he wasn't, what she called "an axe murderer"). Actually, everyone seemed to know who he was except me. My two best friends knew who he was because of basketball, said I'd seen him before, but I had no idea who they were talking about. I didn't go to basketball games to actually watch basketball. They're for socializing, duh.

Apparently, just a few weeks before this fateful AIM chat there was this big basketball game that I went to and he was playing (for the other team). I say "apparently" because my body was in attendance, but my mind absolutely was not. You see, I had just been diagnosed with whiplash (no car accident, no nothing, just random horrible neck pain and a whiplash diagnosis). So I was on muscle relaxers, and friends, Benadryl knocks me out for two days straight so these tiny yellow muscle relaxers had me in the palm of their hand. I have brief memories of the crowd standing to cheer and me, firmly planted on the bleachers drooling, and in a staring contest with the back of whomever's head was right in front of me. I looked basically like this, only sitting on bleachers:

*   *   *   *   *   *

The day of our blind date had arrived. I was upstairs getting ready with my blow dryer on full-blast so I never heard him pull up. He walked up to the door and...

Don't you just love when there's a Part 2 and you have to wait? Personally, I hate it, but this is just too long. Sorry. To make it a little more bearable, I'll just let you know that the next one will be filled with awesome pictures of what feels like a million years ago (OK, 7 1/2, but still).

How We Met

Now this is the story all about how my life got flip-turned upside down and I'd like to take a minute, just sit right there, I'll tell you how I became the wife of a guy named Thom-as.

This one time at band camp Tom and Amy were about to swap phone numbers when it was time to leave. They tried desperately to shout their numbers to one another before boarding their respective buses, but they had a problem. They had just shared a bag of pretzels and it was getting harder and harder to yell.

"These pretzels are making me thirsty!" Tom yelled, as the counselor pulled him up to the first stair of the vehicle.

"Baby, baby, baby, nooooo!" Amy shrieked back as she saw the doors close over Tom's tear-streaked face. "I thought you'd always be mine!"

In the criminal justice system premature separations from summer camp are considered especially heinous. Just 24 hours previous Amy had laid eyes on Tom for the first time. It was minutes before the Sadie Hawkins dance. Tom was wearing khaki pants. She had a weakness for khaki pants, especially the pleated ones.

He was also in the middle of a boxing match (yes, in his khaki pants). While she looked on in a dream-like state, she almost got caught in the crossfire. Tom was boxing another camper, Kramer, in the ring--the one ring to rule them all.

His six-fingered fist was pulled back like an arrow and he was about to release it as he shouted at Kramer, "My name is Tom Inigo Montoya, you scratched my CD, prepare to die!"

Amy ducked, Kramer squealed, Tom moved swiftly; he was about to send Kramer into next week when Amy couldn't bear it anymore. "Stop!" Amy shouted, "I volunteer as tribute!" Amy climbed into the ring and shook as she stared into Tom's huuunnngryyy eyes.

Tom's fists dropped to his side, he stood there for a minute, silent, as the invitation to the dance rolled off her tongue, "Hello. I'm just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her."

"You had me at hello," Tom said as he literally swept Amy off her feet. He set her down outside of the boxing ring, "Would you be my girlfriend? I'd treat you good. You know I hear your friends when they say you should."

Amy accepted, held his hand and said "Your hands are cold."

Tom replied, "Now we're the same temperature."



*A big thank you to Fresh Prince, American Pie, Seinfled, Justin Bieber, Pat Benatar, Lord of the Rings, Princess Bride, Eric Carmen, Notting Hill, Relient K, Jerry Maguire, The Ringer, The Hunger Games, *NSYNC, Pride & Prejudice and Twilight for the above references. Also thank you sister for supporting me through the duration of this post.