Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Hopeless Not Romantic

Making the best of a bad situation is the story of my life. Have you looked at me. I'm dark, with a lazy eye and perpetually fat. I'm detrimentally shy. Clumsy and a bit of a nerd. It's lucky I ever got laid, let alone married. All jokes aside I didn't get much to work with. Confidence was never my strong suit. I could do anything, but make me talk to a pretty girl, nothing doing.


I have the social skills equivalent of two left feet. Even in the beginning I had trouble communicating my intentions. I might as well have been mute. In kindergarten I had a crush on a little girl named Theresa. She had freckles and the biggest smile. I didn't know how express myself so I ended up drawing her a rainbow colored heart. I remember her smiling, but I don't know if it won her heart over.

Over the years I realized that my move was listening and acting accordingly. My next big crush came in second grade. A girl named Ana. She was slender and tall. I was totally smitten. For Valentine's Day I decided to make my move. I got those generic valentines with a cartoon character for all the other classmates. Ana got a actual card with a couple sharing a ice cream float inside the shape of a heart on the front. To seal the deal I went through my mom's jewelry box. She had a box of cheap Avon rings. I liked the one with a green stone and I dropped it in the envelope with the card. I don't think it went over well, because I don't remember talking to her again afterward. Oddly enough I graduated from high school with both of these girls. Since I left the neighborhood and I didn't see them again until high school, I don't think they remembered me doing those things by then.

Basically after that I followed the same routine. Try not to be obvious and give them nice things. Sometimes in works most of the time it didn't. I only had 2 official girlfriends. I did date a bit and had some more than friends relationships but never anything official. Either they didn't want to be that girl or I didn't push the issue like I should have. No matter what the title, they always seemed to come to me. My wife was the only woman I ever had to work for.

I never imagined in a million years that I would marry or start a family with this woman. She was known for being hard to deal with. Playing on that, when we first shared an office I started just simply trying to annoy her. I knew she didn't want to be bothered with me so I would try to strike up conversations with her. I bet she though I was weird. For Valentine's I left her flowers and a balloon, and a card to mess with her. She was totally freaked out by it. She wouldn't even go to the movies with me. I had suggested we go see Monster's Inc together. She said OK. When her time to go home came, she walked right past me with her purse on her shoulder on her way out the door.

Finally she agreed to meet me at the mall to watch The Count of Monte Cristo together, because she couldn't get anyone else to go with her. We each arrived separately and had a slice of pizza, which we paid for individually as well as the movie ticket. She would not let me pay because she didn't want me to have anything to justify calling it a date. The more I tried to breakdown that wall the more I liked her. It took many weeks and a lot of work to get her to accept me as a suitor. I don't think she knew what to do with the attention and genuine sentiment. I must of done something right because here we are 11 years later.


No comments:

Post a Comment