The Beginning (well, from high school actually)

The Beginning (well, from high school actually)

  "Wow, we have screwed up" were the words out of my boyfriend's mouth when I told him I was pregnant. Not exactly what I would have preferred to hear but definitely understandable. Not much more was said on our drive back to his house. It was a lot to process for two 17 year olds.

   Mike and I had been dating off & on for about two years. My cousin, Tony, had introduced us at my 15th birthday party. My first impression of Mike was that I thought he looked a little "too country" for me. Button down shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow, jeans and cowboy boots. Not many guys in my school dressed like that. He told me later about his first impression of me. He said it was 'love at first sight'. Awww, so sweet.

   Several months went by before we would meet again. It was one night in June, 1985, early summer, but already extremely hot outside. Little did I know that it would be the night that my life would take its turn onto the path that would impact me, us, forever- til death do us part.

   I was spending the night with my very best friend Wanda while her mother and father worked the night shift. Wanda's cousin Missy was also spending the night. Missy thought it might be fun to invite a couple of guys over. I personally, was dating someone at the time so I wasn't particularly interested, but I did give cousin Tony a call to see if he would like to come over for a while.

   I asked that he bring a friend so that there may possibly be a love connection for any of the four of them. Do you remember that show? The Love Connection? I loved that show! Anyway, Tony did bring Mike along with him. The beginning of the night was just the normal hanging out. Well, at least I think it was. I don't really remember much about the early part of the evening. I do remember that we all had to get up early the next morning for various activities we had to do. Wanda and I had band camp and Tony and Mike had to go load trucks with watermelons, or as we call it here in the south- chunkin melons. Tony actually fell asleep first, unfortunately, because Wanda seemed to like him a bit. Mike stayed awake to keep us ladies entertained.

   Now remember, Mike had somewhat of a crush on me, which I STILL didn't know at that time. As a matter of fact, Missy really liked him herself. Mike's personality brightly shined throughout the entire night. Yep, we stayed up the whole night! He was so funny and we laughed til our sides hurt. He even offered to cook us a 3 a.m. breakfast of fried eggs. I decided midway through his cooking that I wanted them scrambled instead, which he graciously gave in to my wish, but it didn't work out too well. Scrambling eggs in enough oil that was intended for frying didn't make for very fluffy or tasty eggs. Yuck! We thought it was very funny and blamed it on his bad cooking.

   I have a bit of tunnel vision memory after that. After the cooking fiasco, I can only remember Mike and I being in the room. I don't remember if Missy and Wanda were still with us or if they too had fallen asleep. I remember something, silly I'm sure, that caused me to start chasing Mike through the house, slapping at him- all in fun of course. He tripped and fell onto a bed and I jumped onto the bed too and kept throwing my girly punches at him. I was never the athlete, so girly punches they were!  We were both laughing hysterically, but as laughter does, it died down and left us face to face. Very close face to face. In that moment, I wanted him to kiss me..... but he didn't. (sigh) To this day I'm still not quite sure why he didn't. He supposedly was crazy about me. And after that night, I was crazy about him too.

.... to be continued....