32 Days: The Meeting

So people, only 32 days to the big day. I'm freakin out a bit about my to-do list but am trying to put things into perspective and stay calm.

In lieu of a freak-out post, I figured I'd write about the night J and I met.

A little backstory: Years ago, when R and I would go to restaurants, we would leave our phone numbers on receipts for the waiter with instructions to 'Take his pick'. I know, it's a bit demeaning to ourselves but it was funny and usually we thought it was hilarious. Literally never did either of us receive a phone call from one of those scrawled receipt messages, but we never expected to. It was just funny to us.

Okay, now for the night J and I met. It was the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving of 2006, and my college roommate at the time blew me off. We were supposed to go to the new Green Turtle in our mutual 'home town', but she took a late nap and didn't wake up in time to go out. At the last minute, I called a middle school friend, J, to see if she wanted to catch up. She had plans with another friend, L, someone I had known since elementary school, so we all decided to go to The Green Turtle together.

We grabbed a booth in the seating section and had some girl talk. To our left was a group of people sitting a long table. Most of them were girls with a few guys scattered about. One of the guys was pretty cute, J and I agreed.

After some more scoping, J, L, and I decided that we'd hop over to the next bar for the rest of the night. But before we left, I wrote a napkin note a la the receipts R and I used to leave that said something along the lines of "Hey, cute boy. Take your pick," with a stick figure drawing of our table with our phone numbers. Pathetic, I know. But hilarious, too, particularly because L wasn't into it, so when she slipped away from the table to go to the bathroom, we discreetly added her number. J and I thought that was so funny.

Anyway, a few moments later as we made our way out of the bar, I picked a path past J and slipped him the folded napkin. He looked utterly confused - as of course he didn't notice our table the entire time we were there - but accepted it.

Flash forward two weeks. That's right, two weeks.

My granny - my great grandmother - had passed away, so my mom was in Arkansas for her funeral. I was speaking with my mom on the phone when I heard the call-waiting beep. Usually I screen but was taken off guard and answered. It was J. He said, "Uh, hi. I got your number off a napkin?" [How funny would it have been if I had said, "You need to be a little more specific"?]

I laughed and told him the napkin was a silly joke (because, really, I was a bit embarassed that we did something so childish) and that I hadn't expected him to call. That didn't sound very kind, but we trudged through the conversation and a few conversations later, we set up our first date.

It turns out that he wasn't going to call again as it was his second attempt and he doesn't leave voicemails. And since I screen, it was lucky that I even answered.

After we started dating regularly and people asked how we met, I'd come up with lavish stories, different every time, to conceal my napkin story. Though I don't think I should truly be embarassed about it because it all worked out.

We considered using cocktail napkins as invitations. Would have been awesome.

Perhaps another day I'll share the story of our first date, which was equally as awkward.