Love Story Part 1

So last week I read the Pioneer Woman's book about how she and her husband met and fell in love. It got me thinking about the story with my own husband. How we met and managed to make everything work. I mean we have only been married for a little under two years now but our story has twists and turns and most people know the glazed over version (which coming from me seem unnecessarily long...) but there are smaller details that I want to freeze in time. So I am going to write our story. One post at a time. Starting....now:
The familiar road was building up the excitment and nervousness I always felt. I was heading up to Camp Dudley, my favorite place in the whole universe. After attending it since I was ten, I was finally able to work there myself. I was ecstatic. I had just gotten my drivers license a week earlier and was putting along in my Great-grandmother's 1986 baby blue Honda Civic. It didn't have auto steering. Have you ever driven a car without auto-steering? It's hard. But there I was, heading towards what I already felt was going to be the best summer of my life.

I turned up the stereo singing along to Jason Mraz. My mind couldn't stop racing. I thought about Tyler, the boy I was leaving behind for the summer. We were still dating and he had even bought a long distance phone card to call me because cell phones don't get reception up there and for some reason I thought it was long distance. We had been dating since winter. He was a nice boy, red hair and tall. He drove a silver mustang and tried his best to figure me out. I think I tried to make myself a little too complicated for him. I didn't really know how relationships were supposed to work. He was technically my first boyfriend (in the official you tell people you are dating sense of the word) and I had started dating him because I was sixteen and had only held hands with another guy.

I was a late bloomer when it came to these things. Not that I wasn't interested or anything. Heck, when I was a freshman in I tried to ask my crush out to tolo before this other girl in class. He rejected me. I did look like I was eight years old. Seriously, students and teachers would stop me the first week and ask me if I was at the wrong school, "Excuse me, I think you mean to be at the middle school across the street..." So no guys were really interested in someone who looked like a little girl. Finally I hit puberty and hoped things were looking up. Nope. At that point all the guys had realized I am not a timid little girl. In fact I am what most people would find obnoxious. I am loud. Outspoken. I don't take crap from guys. Turns out most high school boys don't like a girl who is confident.

So I started hanging out with some people from outside my high school. He was a friend of some friends and after I had told him not drive so fast or throw his empty cup out the window of his moving car, I had taken his notice. He was cute, and I liked that he liked me. He was patient with me, slowly working on giving me my first kiss. He was nice. He starting pushing things a little too far though and I was thankful to be going up to the mountains so I didn't have to feel that pressure for awhile.

I was following my mother in her big red suburban. She didn't want me driving up the mountain by myself. I was a little annoyed...But followed her glacial pace through the twists, turns, and tunnel of Highway 12. My heart started beating faster and my hands started getting clammy as we turned down the road to my future. This always happened. You never knew what would happen at camp. It's slogan, "the experience of a lifetime!" held that promise that whatever happened was going to be good. Soooo sooo good.

I started thinking about boys. I was sixteen after all. I wondered if any would be cute. I wondered if I could get a new boyfriend. I was kinda over Tyler for awhile. I didn't know how to break it off though. Running away to the woods seemed like an easy solution for the time being.

I pulled into the gravel parking lot. I left my things in the car and said goodbye to my mother and baby sister. I started walking to Harvey Hunt Hall, the mess hall for the first breakfast of the summer. The cook hadn't arrived so it was just cereal, muffins, and fruit. I took in the smell of dirt and pine and fresh air as I walked towards the building. I nervously opened the door and remembered the familiar sounds. Harvey Hunt always echoed. Sounds seemed to expand in this space. I glanced around, hoping to see a familiar face from the summer before. Twilight, a counselor from the previous year happily smiled and waved me over. I ran to her and we hugged,
" I am so excited you are working here this summer!" She exclaimed.
"I know I can't wait, you should have seen my when I got the call that I was hired," I then told her about running through my house in a strange sort of gallop-skip shrieking. I of course gave her a visual of the exact movement and sound.
She and the other coworkers laughed and I then went to go grab a muffin.

I should explain her name. Her name isn't really Twilight (this was also long before the vampire craze), it is a camp name. All counselors are given or choose a name for their time working at camp. Once you decide on a name, you can't change it and that is what everyone calls you the entire summer. It's fun. My name is Gidget. Which I got from a 1960s Sandra Dee movie about a puny girl with spunk.

As I went to grab my muffin two boys walked past. One had short dark hair and was wearing the uniform of highschool boys at the time. Hollister this, American Eagle that, a little of Abercrombie thrown in there with some nike shoes. Boring. I thought. The second guy...well he definitely stood out. His hair matched the color of his yellow Hawaiian board shorts. It was clearly bleached. It was very bright. But so was his smile, which he flashed as he walked by. What shoes are those? I thought as I examined his wrestling sneakers, which I had never seen before. He definitely was not my type. I listened in on his conversation at the other table. He seemed a little cocky. He laughed at his own jokes and I decided right then and there that he was probably a jock in high school. The jocks in my high school were jerks, they also weren't very school savvy which is one thing I looked down on.

Welp, no guys so far, I thought, But not everyone is here yet...so there is still hope right? I desperately wanted to fall in love at camp. It was a weird dream of mine. As I caught up with friends and counselors from the previous summer I couldn't help but continue to glance towards this boy with the yellow hair...there was something about him....

Click here for Part 2