We met (in person) at the movie theater down the street, about five minutes away from my parents’ house. I was the girl behind the food counter, pink faced from the steam of the hot dog warmer, with my hair pulled back in a bun, and a dirtied apron hanging on my front. He was skinny and smiling, the kind of smile that makes someone look like they have a secret. He donned a leather jacket, the one that still hangs in our coat closet today, the one he will never get tired of. He would later tell me I look “kinda different” from my picture.
We had (originally) “met” when he found the online profile an old friend put up of me as a prank. I remember getting tons of emails from all of these random guys who had nothing better to do than scan the interweb for dates, and I let it keep up for a week for the laugh of it all, hitting reject on every single one till I was fed up with it and shut the whole thing down. The emails stopped coming eventually, save for one. The one I had actually answered out of them all– the one that made me laugh.
Or rather his picture did. The profile picture he put up was of his Marine photo, which they all take after graduating boot camp, that has them sitting awkwardly in front of a Marine flag and a blue-white background. It looked just like every other Marine photo, white cover (a.k.a. the hat they wear) with the USMC logo in the front, and smartly pressed dress blues. The one thing that made his photo different from the rest was that he was actually smiling! Now, if you have seen other Marine photos you know they do not smile. I don’t know if it’s just their custom, but they don’t smile. Well if you know Chris, you already know he did. Yup, he had this big grin in his photo, and he told me once that the marine photographer kept getting annoyed with him and actually told him to stop grinning, haha. But you can’t stop Chris from being his happy self, no sir. So that big secret holding goofy grin is pretty much what captured my attention… and later on, my heart.
I have always been weary, or ashamed rather, of telling people the “real” way we first met, as opposed to the way I prefer to remember (the first one I mentioned). I don’t know why to be honest, because without my friend’s (once thought of as) stupid prank, I don’t know if Chris and I would have ever crossed paths otherwise. And yeah he can be trying sometimes, and we’ve been through our own share of, ahem, stormy weather, but he puts up with me– for those who know me, and my worst faults, yeah, they’ll whole heartedly agree he deserves a medal.
We don’t have everything in common, but that would be boring if we did. One thing we are alike at is being insane Disney fanatics. We even honeymooned for three days at Disney World, and then hopped on board for the rest of the four days on the Disney Cruise ship, The Disney Wonder, and partied it up in the Bahamas a la Disney style. We go to Disneyland at least twice a month, and I’m pretty sure we’ve conditioned both James and Logan to continue in our disney fanatical legacy by this point.
So, today is our Triple 8. It’s truly an amazing day for us because, as corny as it is, the number “8″ is our special number. We love that it symbolizes infinity, never ending… always. We became an official dating couple on the eight of july, eight months after I saw his smiling face at the movies, and it’s pretty much become our lucky number. Oh and this year will make it eight years together.. yeah you can’t make that stuff up.
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To my Bear, my Babe, my Love… “you are my sunshine, my only sunshine”, my light, my star, my happy place… my “always and forever“. Thank you for being an unbelievably amazing dad to our sons, and for being the addicted gamer, trekkie, fellow Disney fanatic, and HP fan that you are. This date will only come once in our lifetime, but it’s you and me, far longer than forever. I love you.
