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Actually, I was a model child...excellent grades, never made trouble, didn't even date until after high school. Well, unless you count the one disastrous blind date I had, but we won't go into that *ahem*. I just wanted to make it through my teen years without making any waves. I was, for the most part, successful. The morning after high school graduation, I left with my mother for a summer in Florida. Finally, I was 18! How to celebrate? Why, go go the beach and bleach my hair as blonde as I could get it, of course! That summer I was introduced to my first job (Tom Thumb Food Store #49 in Perdido Key, FL.....let me just say YUCK!), my first kiss, and my first taste of freedom. It was a wonderful summer. |  |
| Alas, all good things must come to an end and I departed the soothing white sands of Pensacola for college in Kirksville, Missouri. Notice how my ID says Northeast Missouri State University and NOT this so-called Truman University they insist on calling it now. College was a whole new world. For the first time in my life, I finally felt free to explore who I was. Turns out who I was was a confused, suicidally depressed underachiever who had no direction in life. Imagine that! After two years of pretending I was a functional human being, I dropped out of my classes, estranged myself from my friends, dumped my fiancee, and fled back to Florida. |  |
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My mom and I did the
usual...hung out on the beaches, gawked at the military guys,
went to the Blue Angels air shows, and we did our good deed with volunteer work at
the local Air and Space Museum. Boy, was that tempting fate. The second weekend I was there, I happened to be in a very bad mood (they'd stuck me into the children's section, a place I hated) when this jerk walked up and started looking through the section. I snidely asked him if he wanted to color, too and I suppose he took that as a challenge. We wound up talking for the entire time I was there (yeah, I ignored my volunteer duties)...and guess what? I still thought he was a jerk by the time he left, only by then I had surmised that he was an arrogant jerk. |  |
| Sometime during the conversation, I mentioned that my mother worked at the front desk, so he dropped by to meet her on the way out. Leave it to him to have an ulterior movtive, though. While introducing himself, he made note of her name and looked it up in the phone book the next day to give me a call. Despite proving what a difficult person I am (or perhaps because I did), he asked me out to lunch before he had to fly back to California that afternoon. Hey, free meal, right? Why not? It was a pleasant lunch, but I didn't think too much of it until, (and here's where the plot thickens), I started getting postcard after postcard in the mail. Every time he stopped someplace, he sent me a postcard. I suppose I found it very sweet, romantic, and endearing because I now have a thing for postcards. I also contacted him and we struck up a relationship on the phone. Several weeks later, he came back to visit and spent a week getting to know me. It still wasn't love at second sight, but I did get to know him much better and my opinion of the jerk changed. | |
| After keeping both the U.S. postal service and Ma Bell in business for the next few months, we decided there was more to this than just a pen-pal/phone relationship, so he arranged for me to fly to California. I was hesitant to leave at that time, though. My mother and I had just moved back to Missouri and my grandfather was on his death bed. It was my grandmother who finally convinced me to go and not to put my life on hold. I finally said my goodbyes to grandpa, packed my bags, and climbed onto the plane, ready to begin the next phase of my life. I arrived in Los Angeles the afternoon of September 10, 1990. Sometime between then and the next morning, my grandfather died. I was devastated. John offered to fly me back to go to the funeral, but I opted to stay. I'd already said my goodbyes, but Grandpa's death haunted me for months. I dreamt of him every night and couldn't get past the guilt of leaving. |
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On Christmas night of 1990, John proposed to me. He was most unromantic in the manner in which he did it, but I accepted anyway. In January, the Gulf War raged on, and he was given orders to go. We decided to go ahead and get married before he had to leave. We debated having a big
wedding with the entire family there, but I never was much on
big weddings and there was no time. Besides, my parents didn't like being in the same room, so I didn't feel comfortable
having a function that would bring them together. (I
didn't want my wedding interrupted by a murder) So.... we sent out wedding announcements on our way to get
married! That certainly solved the problem of people showing up. On January 18th, we drove from Los Angeles to Mesa, Arizona and
got married. Don't we just look thrilled in this shot? Nerves! Afterward, we were treated to Red Lobster by a friend of John's and then spent the night in the house of the same friend. The next day we piled back into the truck and returned to work. Ah, such romantics. The war ended, John's deployment orders were revoked, and life went on as usual, only we were married! How strange. About two months later, we learned that I was pregnant....... |  |