The Empire Strikes Back & It Was A Date

April 1997

After the awk­ward­ness of real­iz­ing I had been asked out many times but couldn’t fig­ure it out, a date was set for see­ing re-release of The Empire Strikes Back (yes, he likes Star Wars–as in knows EVERY.SINGLE.LINE).   He arrived at my house for this date, after hav­ing been over before with an his dyed hair, tat­too show­ing & I believe my Dad might have had a small heart attack upon see­ing that.

Which would have been funny except my Dad really does have a heart con­di­tion & so that kind of takes the funny out of heart attacks.  But really why are heart attacks funny?  I think that’s kind of bizarre…

Any­way back to the date

After he arrived we hung out for a bit at my house.  My cat threw up all over the floor & near his feet.  I think it was her way say­ing “Hi, I like you enough to throw up near your feet.”  You know how cats are vomit is like roses & candy to them.

We left for our date in his blue Pon­tiac Sun­bird.  It had a crack in the wind­shield that I kept star­ing at because I was try­ing not to be the weird date who stared at him too much.   I had but­ter­flies, rain­bows & I think horses run­ning around in my stom­ach from the ner­vous­ness & excite­ment of a first date.  Even though we had been eat­ing lunch together for months, talk­ing, walk­ing around cam­pus together & hang­ing out off cam­pus this was a date.

A totally dif­fer­ent ball game, I made sure to wear clean clothes for this.  Not just the clothes I found in a ball on the floor or chair in my room.  But clean clothes.  Clothes that I had to try on in mul­ti­ple dif­fer­ent com­bi­na­tions just to wear the same thing I’d wear any other day but only cleaner. That’s how you know it’s a date, when you are ner­vous over clothes.

Our din­ner was at a Coney Island.  Sen­ate Coney Island in fact.  We sat across from one another with those goo­gly eyes that once you are in a rela­tion­ship long enough you can rec­og­nize across a room.  The goo­gly eyes of young, new love.  The kind that says “No, you hang up first.  No you.”  The kind that after you are together long enough makes you laugh, smile & remem­ber the horses run­ning wild in your stom­ach with excitement.

We went to the movie & held hands.  He was funny, sweet & offered to pay for the date.  He kissed me at the end of the movie.  To which a lit­tle boy (who was in the the­ater hav­ing his own sweet date with his Mom & who had ear­lier shouted out “EWW!!  Luke just kissed his sista! Groooooossss!!!”) said “EWW!! Now he kissed her.  Groooooossss!!!”  And then totally dead­pan looked at his mother and asked “Are they brother & sis­ter too? EWW!!”

With that we had our first date.  Made a child grossed out & may have been mis­taken for brother & sis­ter.  It was won­der­ful.  Then the rela­tion­ship really picked up steam…

[this is part of my “how I met your father” series]

Tagged as: how i met your father, husband, love at first sight, Marriage