David always laughs when we talk about freshman me because I literally had NOTHING going on. When he asked what time I could meet for coffee, I’m pretty sure I just told him straight up…I’m free always. Because I’m a freshman. My only class that day was at 4pm so we agreed to meet at the on campus Starbucks in the afternoon. (So romantic, right?)
Here’s how I spent the day preparing for our maybe date: watching Buffy the vampire slayer. And letting my hall mate straighten my hair. But mostly watching Buffy. This was of extreme importance. (If you’re a college student, can you please promise me you’ll treasure your copious amounts of free time?!)
This is how important Buffy was to me: important enough to text David and ask if we could meet 15 minutes later. And subsequently important enough to be even later than that. (it was a really good episode, okay?!) So I rolled into Starbucks tardy, and I didn’t even have the dignity or self preservation to lie when David asked what I’d been doing. I tried to explain the teenage vampire slayer to him, but I could tell he wasn’t buying into it. He offered to pay for my hot chocolate. And I refused. And then I swiped my student ID to put it on my meal plan instead. Smooth.
We sat in the big squishy arm chairs by the windows and started talking. And for some reason I couldn’t help myself. I unloaded every bit of nerdiness on him. I must’ve brought up Harry Potter within the first 5 minutes. And Twilight. (Because sadly, this is when I thought Stephanie Meyer was brilliant. I’m ashamed by the mere memory, friends) I remember feeling like I was backpedaling with every sentence, but it was like nerdy** word vomit. It was all downhill from there. We started talking about TV shows and got on the subject of LOST. David was obsessed, and I refused to watch it on principle. And then we got into an argument about LOST. I would not give in, and insisted House, MD was a better show (throwback alert). I think we were joking, but it felt very serious to me that he know that LOST was not quality television. We were so caught up in talking about nothing that held any significance in real life that it was time for me to go to class very quickly. (you know, also because I was late because of buffy) I forgot to drink my hot chocolate.
David offered to walk me to class, so we walked the short distance together. Just as we were finally talking about real things, like things that weren’t TV shows or things I was obsessed with, we had gotten to my building. I walked up the stairs to Whit and David walked right past them, not noticing that we’d arrived. So that left us to do an awkward wave to say goodbye.
I sat down in my ITECH 200 class, completely unsure of what had just happened. I sipped my now lukewarm hot chocolate and tried to process the weirdness of the last hour. I decided I was at least a little interested in him.
And David walked away from that day deciding he was definitely not interested in dating me.
Continued here: All the mixed signals
Pictures of us from early November of 2008. Because these were the two individuals who would eventually fall in love and have a baby(!!!). Craziness. Also because they’re funny.
* *I am a super nerd and I am 100% okay with that. I just don’t normally reveal that when I first meet someone :]
note* I thought it’d be fun to recount our love story here on the blog. It’s funny, it’s most definitely awkward, and it tells you a little bit about our not so stellar beginnings. Also, it’s one of my favorite stories to tell. Also, when I told David my idea he said “Oh noooooo.” I’ll be posting updates every Friday for the next few weeks! And I’m politely asking that you do not judge the photos because they are most definitely pulled from facebook and terrible, terrible quality :]
