Get ready for some mushy sweet post. Welcome to the “Week of Love.” In just a few short days David and I will celebrate 24 years of marriage. Over the course of the next week I will be sharing stories about us, our relationship, and how we have managed to keep it all together during the course of the last 24 years.
We meet one August afternoon during my 1st week of college in the Student Center at Lee. We had a mutual friend that introduced us. It was not a private introduction, but it was me being introduced to a group of people that my friend knew. I wish I could say that it was love at first sight. I wish I could say that from the moment I saw him I knew he was the one. However, that is not how our story begins. Our story begins much differently.
My first impressions of David were not great. I really did not think much of him. I found him to be bit arrogant and argumentative. He was also not impressed with me and felt that I was a bit stuck up and snobby. While I did not really care for David I immediately liked all of the other people that my friend introduced to me. By the time I left the student center that day I had several new friends, but David was not one of them.
At the time Lee was not a big school. It seemed that I ran into David and my new friends quite often during that first week on campus. During “move-in week” prior to classes starting the school hosted a variety of events. One night we all decided to go to a concert at the Conn Center. When we got there, seating became an issue. As we were filing into the row David decided to switch places because he did not want to have to sit by me. Even though I found him to be off-putting, I would be lying if I said it did not hurt my feelings. I could not understand why he of all people would not want to sit by me, he acted like I would bite him or something.
A few nights later I wondered into the student center looking for someone to hang out with. David was sitting in a booth by himself. I looked around the room and still saw no one else to talk to. No friend to be found, anywhere. I had a choice I could turn around and walk away pretending I did not see him (when I knew full well he had seen me and knew I had seen him), or I could go up to him and try to hold a conversation. So I made the decision to go and sit with him and prayed that our other friends would show up soon.
It was a bit awkward at first. I had figured out he really did not care for me and he seemed to know that I did not really care for him either. Somehow we managed to talk to each other while we waited for others to arrive. Some walls came down and he began to see me for who I really was deep inside and I learned that he is not arrogant and he is only argumentative when he has a deep passion about an issue. Our friends never did arrive that night. I think it is a good thing that they all had other things to do, because had they shown up that night, David and I might not have had the conversations that we had. Had we not spent so much time talking that night things could be different today.
Within a few days we were a couple and have now spent over 2 decades together. Decades sounds so much longer than 24 years.