Monday, August 25, 2008

1000 Words


Obviously, I did not take this picture. But, when I scanned it this weekend, while digging through old family photos, I knew it needed a few words.

This is Ryan and me at my Junior Prom, 1993. Ryan is a year younger than me and I had a crush on him from the minute I saw him. He was my seminary teacher's younger brother. I remember him being pretty quiet, but not shy. Had a fun sense of humor and as with all of my crushes, I idiotically followed him everywhere I could. Oh, I'm embarassed just thinking about it. But thankfully, he was just clueless enough to my shenanigans to not be turned off.

One day, as I was leaving seminary, Ryan's brother, Eric came up to me and said, "How do you feel about going on a date with a younger guy?", ahhh what? I had an idea where he was going and tried not to jump out of my skin before I could say "THAT WOULD BE GREAT!!! WHEN? NOW? I'M READY NOW!!!" Not really but the ticker in my brain sure was trying to spit that out. I got ahold of myself and answered that I would be juuuust fine with that. And as is Eric's style, that's all I got. Just sit and stew...and wait....

I'm waiting tables at Western Steer one night and all of a sudden I see Eric and Ryan walk in. Heart sink stomach. Brain losing function. Scared out mind. Yeah, I was not well when I saw them. The fact that Ryan was holding flowers did not help matters. Eric asked if I could take a break and since it was a quiet evening, I could. He asked me to go sit at a table in the back and said someone would be with me shortly.

Ryan walks up, smiles, and sits down. Hands me the flowers and points at the envelope. On the outside is written "Open Me". Heh. Told you he had a fun sense of humor. Gets better. I open it and it says "Don't say a word. Would you go to the prom with me? Blink once for yes. Blink twice for no." It took all of my power to make sure I only blinked ONCE. (I still have that card. You know it.)

Fast forward to prom night. Can't you see the excitement on our faces????? We were scared to death! Neither one of us had dated very much and I was older than him. He didn't even have his license yet, so I had to drive. Add all of that together and we were quite a pair. Didn't know what we were doing, he didn't know anyone at my school and I was driving him around. Getting ready for when he would come to pick me up, I was so nervous I got a lovely breakout of hives. His family arrived, we took some pictures (with my hair UP, I might add, stupid clip broke after we left and I was not too happy about having it down the rest of the night) and we drove off in his sister's Ford Tempo. Niiice.

We went to dinner at Darryl's, and then on to the prom. I couldn't even tell you if we danced. The whole night is a blur. I'm sure we left before it was over and drove around for a while, not knowing what to do. We ended up going back to his parents house and hanging out with his brothers until everyone fell asleep. I woke up the next morning on the living room couch and he had gone to get us biscuits for breakfast.

Needless to say, I screwed it all up eventually and he was gone. I ran in to him a year or so later and man, was I jealous of the new girl. He was still cute as ever, wonder what he's like now.

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