Thank you to Yahoo! Mail for sponsoring this post about staying connected. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective, which endorses Blog With Integrity, as I do.
Boy meets girl. Boy asks girl on a date. Boy falls in love with girl. Boy & girl live happily ever after.
Except, ours went more like: Girl meets boy. Girl falls in love with boy. Boy barely notices girl exists. Girl stalks boy through email for 6 months. Boy asks girl on a date. Boy falls in love with girl. Boy & girl live together ever after. The happily part came & went through the years, but that’s another story.
This is the never told story of a long ago email stalking flirtation. The story of us.
The story most people remember is we were engaged less than 6 months after beginning our relationship and married when I was 5 months pregnant. My version is better—we met in 1995 (my freshman year of college), were engaged in 1996, married in 1997 and had our first child in 1998.
And, none of it would ever have happened, if it weren’t for one impulsive, late night email.
But, I suppose I should back up a bit. I first met Spencer when I needed some help finishing a project. The super cute geek in the computer lab came to my rescue, but I didn’t think much beyond “Oh, yum!” and “Crap! I hope I can get this finished on time.” So, I didn’t even get his name.
Then, I bumped into him again, a few weeks later—on my turf. I served him ‘mocktails’ at my dorm’s Casino Night fundraiser and brazenly introduced myself. This is sort of not like me, but I figured seeing the same cutie twice in one month was fate. We flirted (yes, even him—it was awhile later before I realized he kind of isn’t good at it.) a bit and that was that.
Everything in me wanted to call him up the next day and invite him to our dorm’s formal that night, but I figured it would be a bit much. So, I settled for bumping into him the next week at the computer lab & sending random, light-hearted emails to stay on his mind—a tactic I employed for the several months. I flirted. He blushed. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Until the night I stayed up way too late and ended up sending a completely different kind of email, about how much I liked him. I can’t begin to tell you how much I wished for an undo button that night. It was completely candid & totally humiliating, probably even more so because he didn’t even bother to respond. But, it did put things out there and make my feelings completely obvious to a clueless college kid.
It would be several more months before he did anything about it, but it didn’t take much from there for everything to click. And, that’s a story for another day!
I love this post!! How stinkin’ cute, I had no idea of the back story of you two — just that you’ve built an amazing life together! And that wow, funny how different things were in 1991 vs 1995 — my small college didn’t have email until I was graduating, in 1995.
Adorable.