Beginning Word Count: 12,809
Today's blog is a story of romance -- how I met my husband. Personally, I think we have a very sweet and unusual story. My husband and I are high school sweet hearts. We are also met through the internet. We're a long absence reunion story. In short, I do believe we are soul mates and each other's other half, separated for almost a quarter century and reconnected. So that's the short version. But it certainly won't get me my one thousand six hundred and sixty seven words for today (you saw what I just did there, didn't you?). And it is also way too short to truly tell the story.
So, what is our story?
It began a long time ago -- in 1983. We were both fifteen years old, sophomores in high school, in our first week at London Central High School at High Wycombe in England. London Central was an American high school in England. It was also a boarding school. Classes might have started on a Monday, but we did not have any classes together. So we did not meet until Friday afternoon -- when it was time for us to head back home to RAF Greenham Common, near Newbury, in England.
High Wycombe Air Station, where London Central was located, was approximately a ninety minute ride from RAF Greenham Common, so the high school students whose parents were stationed at Greenham Common were five day "Dormies". This meant that we took a lovely charter bus from Greeham up to High Wycombe on Monday mornings and another one from High Wycombe to Greenham on Friday evenings.
That's the set up.
I was, and still am, a very shy person. I feel very awkward when talking to people I do not know. I will smile and say hello, but that is forced and not something and I am comfortable doing. I also do not like sitting at the back of the bus and will always take the seat closest to the front. I do that even now.
So, I got to the bus to go home fairly early and had my suitcase loaded up. And then I took the seat in the very front, to the right of the door (remember, in England, the driver sits on the wrong side of the car). I was sitting by myself in this seat, and I was reading a book. (I still do this.) My feet were propped up on the bar.
Then he walked onto the bus. He had to be the cutest guy I had seen at the school all week. He had this gorgeous thick pitch black hair with just a tiny bit of wave, and he was wearing a nice shirt and pants, and a tie. And he had this odd smile. He turned to me, grabbed my boot and said "Tell me what I forgot or I'm going to steal your boot." So we had a long conversation where I asked him all sorts of things and suggested many items. It turns out he had actually not forgotten anything. He was just feeling overwhelmed because he didn't want to go home without everything he needed.
John sat next to me on the bus ride home to Greenham and we talked the entire ninety minutes. I was actually a bit disappointed when we arrived and I had to say good bye to him. I was certain he would not talk to me again. But I hoped he would.
The next monday came, and John sat next to me on the bus ride to High Wycombe, and we talked the whole ride there. I have no idea what we found to talk about for effectively three hours, but he was willing to talk to this gawky, awkward person and he made me smile a lot.
Monday afternoon, after we were done with classes, I gathered up all the courage I could find (after searching through the closets and drawers), I walked over to the guys' dormitory and asked them to page John. When he came downstairs, I asked him on a date. John maintains that I asked him to be my boyfriend.
Either way, that was rather forward for 1983, a time when girls really rarely asked boys on dates and usually only for Sadie Hawkins.
John accepted and we went out.
That was how we met. We went to the same high school, but we met on the road back to our home bases. If my father or his mother had not been stationed at RAF Greenham Common, we might have gone a long time to the same school without actually meeting. We did not have the same classes. We actually never had a class together during our entire high school career. We both did theatre, so we would likely have met during one of the plays.
But I probably would never have had the courage to approach him.
And I wonder if we would have actually gotten a chance to know each other if I were not the type of person who sits in the front row of buses, and he was not paranoid about forgetting something. He might have gotten on the bus and walked right past me to the back.
So a lot of little odd things happened to make sure we met on that day, and had the chance to really get to know each other.
Throughout high school, we dated. I think every couple has a couple who is thought of as 'together', even when they are not. We were the couple that broke up and would get back together. At one point, John even proposed to me and we were engaged.
But at the time that we graduated, John and I were no longer dating.
We were not dating, but we were not out of touch with one another. It was just not our time.
When I was in college, John visited twice. Once was just before my final semester, and he was there when I graduated.
But it was still not our time.
In 1992, six years after we graduated from high school, John and I and another friend of ours from high school went to Disney World. John and I were not dating at that time, and I had had my heart broken by him one time too many. I was determined that this trip would not be another reunion for us. Add to that, approximately one month before that trip, I had met another man and we had started dating. Eventually, I would marry that person.
We had a great time at Disney... but this was the last we saw of each other, or spoke to one another, for sixteen years. It was still not our time.
John and I lost touch, as is often the case. I certainly could not very well maintain a correspondence with my ex-fiance when I was engaged and then married. I would not have appreciated it had my then husband had a relationship (even friendly) with a former fiancee.
In the meantime, I got divorced. John dated other women and tells me he missed me terribly. His friends all knew of me as "the one who got away", and he believed that I was married -- as he knew I had gotten married. So John never tried to locate me.
So for a good long period of time, we had no contact at all.
The year I turned thirty nine was a very good year, and I mention this only because it really was. It was a landmark year, and the year that I really consider that I finally got it together.
Anyway, the year I turned thirty nine, I tried to create a yahoo group for a London Central High School Reunion. John joined it, and we started talking. (I admit I have completely dropped the ball on that group; however, with Facebook, there really is no reason for it.) We had several conversations, and they were all very polite, very non-descript...very safe. However, the one conversation that stood out was when I told John I would be out of touch for a bit as I had just been cast in a community theatre production of Little Shop of Horrors, in my first leading role -- Audrey -- and I did not know how much time I'd have.
John wrote the most amazing email back. I wish I had saved it, but it really opened my eyes. He told me that I would be wonderful in the role, because I was just someone who could truly excel. He had not seen me for fifteen years, and he still beleived I was amazing. He believed I was amazing in ways I had never seen for myself, and had this image of me that surprised me. As I've always lacked confidence (I can fake it really well), for him to say what he did surprised me.
So much so that I talked to another of the women in the cast about this email. She told me that he must still have feelings for me. Considering I had always compared every relationship, and how I felt in them, to my relationship with John, I did still have feelings for him too. But I was uncertain. I asked her if I should ask John about exchanging phone numbers. And she completely thought it would be a great idea and encouraged it. It took me a little bit of time before I made the decision.
I asked him if we should exchange numbers. He emailed it to me right away.
And like before, I called him up. But as soon as I said "Hi, this is Misty." He said "I love you."
He didn't say "hello, how are you?" He totally pulled a Ted and declared he loved me right from the first moment.
This time, John was the brave one. In our new relationship, John has been brave and taken risks that I never would have dared. After we spoke on the phone for a couple of months, he packed up his life and moved across country from Las Vegas to Montgomery.
Montgomery.
Let me repeat this. He left Las Vegas, Nevada and moved to the black hole of Montgomery, Alabama. He arrived in Montgomery on February 12, 2008. And he moved here for no other reason than he wanted to be with me.
Yeah....me.
For John, this was our time. He was not going to let me get away again.
Honestly, it scared me. This man had put everything on the line, and I was terrified of that level of commitment. What if we were really not compatible? What if it was like high school all over again and our relationship could not exist for period longer than six months at a time? Here he would have given up his job and his residence...everything ... just for me.
But it was a risk that paid off. It turned out that in the time that we were apart, we had grown more similar. We loved the same movies, the same books, had the same interests -- things that were not true in high school. In high school, we loved each other but had very little in common. Our distance had made us closer through the time we were apart.
In August 2008, John proposed to me in front of a full house on the final night of a production at that same community theatre where I was in Little Shop of Horrors. It was the first time we had been on the stage together in twenty two years.
We met in August of the year 1983.
In September of 2009, we got married. Twenty six years after we first met.
So we are re-united high school sweet hearts who reconnected through the internet.
The funny thing? not one person from our high school was surprised we got married -- just that it took us so long.
Today's Word Count: 2,002
Total Word Count: 14,811
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