Day Twenty-Three: A proposal

The month of November is National Blog Posting Month. This is my 5th year participating. This year, for thirty days, I'll be telling stories from some point in my life. Enjoy!









My husband was not the first person to propose to me.


Are you shocked?


You should be.


You see, once I "dated" this boy.  I use the term "dated" very loosely because you see, over the period of a little more than two years i went out on 6 dates with the boy.  Three before his LDS mission and three after his mission.  He was a kid I'd gone to high school with.  We were not friends.  I pretty much thought he was sloppy and gross.


The first set of dates came happened in a round about way.  He was in attendance at the same church meeting as me.  We somehow ended up walking out together and talking for a while outside, after the meeting.  At that time, he didn't seem to be nearly as big of a goober I had thought him to be.  As our conversation was wrapping up, he asked if he could call me sometime.


I said sure.


Um...bad idea.  The first date was okay.  I thought he was nice.  The second date was a bit blah, but I was trying to be nice.  The third date I found him as annoying as I had in high school and wanted out fast.


He sent me letters while on his mission.  He wanted pictures of me for his "friend" wall in his apartment.  I never wrote.  I never sent photos.


Fast forward two years.  He got home and I got dumb.  Being perpetually dateless has it's benefits.  Being a bit lonely however does not.  Somehow he found me.  He asked me out.  I was lonely and bored and I said yes.


Three more dates that followed the same pattern as they had two years previous.


I was done.


At the time, ignoring someone was the easiest way for me to get rid of them so I ignored.


He stalked.  He drove past my house all the time.  It felt like he was lurking everywhere.  I played basketball with his cousin on the weekends and she said that he really liked me.  He tried to come and watch me play basketball.


He totally creeped me out.


I-G-N-O-R-E!!!!


Then one night there was a knock at my door.  It was him.  It was cold outside.  He asked me to come out and talk.  I obliged but not without giving my mom and sister a look of fear that begged that they watch out the window.


This boy yelled at me for messing with his life, desperate to know why I didn't return his calls and was ignoring him.  He was frantic and creepy and I remember that when I got in the house, my mom said she thought he was going to hit me or something.  I had to be honest, and tried to be nice.  I didn't really like him.  I didn't want to date him anymore.  I thanked him for the dinners and the activities and wished him luck.


I thought that was the end of it.


Every once in a while I still saw him drive past my house.  


Then, on a spring day, when my dad and sister were outside doing the yard work, Haley came in and told me I had a visitor.  She didn't tell me who.  I walked out into the garage and it was him.  He came to visit me.  There was a girl in the car.  He told me that she was his fiance and that they were getting married in a few weeks.


I told him congratulations.


He said thank you and handed me the invitation.


As he passed the card over to me he said that he really liked me.  That he wished we hadn't stopped seeing each other.  That he didn't really want to marry the girl in the car and that he was hoping I could give him a good reason to call the whole thing off.


You know - like in the movies - I think he wanted me to jump into his arms, say I'd always loved him, and that the girl wouldn't be sad or dejected...she'd just walk away and find some other boy.


I looked him in the eyes and said, "I hope you two will be really happy together."  Or something like that.  He stood there stunned, then walked away.


Phew!  That was close.  My dad stayed in the garage and witnessed the whole thing.


I did not go to the wedding.  I thought I was finally done with that boy.


Flash forward a few months to the beginning of the new school year.  It was going to be my first full year of teaching, I'd just graduated from the "U" in May and I was so excited and so nervous.  Our beginning of the school year meetings were at a hotel in a big ballroom.  I was sitting taking notes when the new teachers were introduced.


That's when I heard HER name.  That boy?  Well, his wife got a job teaching science at MY school.


How could this have happened?  He's still stalking me?  At the first break in the meeting SHE came up to me and said that her husband had told her to seek me out.  That we could be the best of friends.


The first semester of school was pretty awful.  I avoided that teacher like the plague.  Her husband, that boy?  He was at school all the time.  He walked past my classroom door slowly and stared in at least once a week.  Sometimes more.


No, I'm not making this up.  He was still stalking me a bit.  Following me around.


How did it end?  She couldn't hack it as a teacher.  She also got pregnant.  Then, she quit.


I never heard from him again.  A few years back when I tried out the cursed facebook for a few months he tried to be my friend several times.


Thank goodness for "IGNORE".