How I Met My Now-Husband

Jessica G recently pointed out that I have never disclosed on my blog how I met now-DH. I can see how I overlooked that given my former, "No dating life specifics," policy. (Well, and the entire lack of wedding content on my blog. That's just lazy and newlywed distracted on my part.) Now that the "no dating life specifics" policy has transformed into, "no marital life specifics," I suppose that now is as good a time as any to post such a story! The following post is an amalgamation of a previous blog draft, an email to a friend, and a little future-perspective commentary.

Family Home Evening is so not my style. My family was never in the groove with the notion of dedicating one evening to a packaged lesson and activity - we were much more "freestyle" with that sort of establishing of family unity and gospel foundations. We like to think we turned out just fine despite our adaption of any prophetic counsel on the topic. Even more so, Family Home Evening as a single is (was) completely not my style. I greatly dislike small talk, I consider most of the singles' ward FHE lessons to be elementary and hashed, and -- most of all -- I don't enjoy playing Pictionary with chocolate pudding and drawing with toes. (And really, the current structure of singles' wards are all about encouraging person A and person B into couple AB and how am I supposed to get person B to like me when he's now seen my toes in pudding? Not cute. So very not cute.)

Despite these opinions, one Monday I found myself driving to FHE (an inconveniently located FHE at that). It seemed to me that for several weeks E, who was my visiting teaching companion and the ward activities leader, had been encouraging me to go to FHE. This week she knew I was in the lull between finishing the writing on my thesis and flying out to Utah to defend my thesis. I no longer had my excuse, "I can't! Thesis!" She sent me a text message, "You should go to AARP FHE. There's a guy named W you need to meet. You're kinda similar." Or something like that. My former cellphone gave up the ghost, so I can't reference the actual text message.

Three points of clarification. The first, "AARP" in this instance is not "American Association of Retired Persons." Rather, it's the quirky-Austin and black humor of the group shining through. It's a semi-sanctioned, multi-stake group of LDS singles between 25 and 35 that meet for FHE once a month. That is, the individuals who have experienced or who are closed to experiencing the forced-retirement from a "YSA (Young Single Adult) ward when one turns 30. The second, it is (was) my general policy to accept being set up by people simply because with the introverted lifestyle I lead I know the number of people I'm going to meet on my own are pretty limited. The third, that E and I had spent a lot of time together driving out into the boondocks for visiting teaching appointments so she was actually in a fairly good position to recognize the sorts of guys I might be interested in. (How she found and identified him is a story unto itself.)

Still, I was very reluctant to attend the meeting. I don't like FHE. I'm not certain E knows me well enough to really set me up with anyone with any success. And I really, really hate going to places I've never been to be with a group of people I've never met. Its something I try very hard to avoid.

I prayed a bit on the matter because I felt I ought to. The informal prayer went as such: "I don't want to go, but I don't have an excuse, really. Should I go?" Affirmative. "Do I have to go?" Negative. "I really, really don't like FHE or strange places or groups of people I don't know and generally don't have any success in being set up with people anyway." I know. Still, you should go. "Fiiiiiiiiiiine."

Further obstacles presented themselves. I didn't know the location of the shindig until 2 or 3 on Monday afternoon. It was on a far side of town I'd never been to. I didn't have a clue as to what time the event was to start. I just wanted to do all the things I'd been delaying while working on my thesis. And surprise! It's a potluck and we're discussing the most recent general conference. I had no potluck offerings, had to leave straight from work, and hadn't taken conferences notes. Sigh. "I don't want to go." You should. "Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine."

I was lost for 35 minutes. 15 of those trying to find the apartment complex. 15 trying to find the building within the complex. Another 5 trying to find the apartment in the building. "I just want to go home." You really shouldn't. "Fiiiiiiiiiiiiine."

As it turns out. I finally managed to find the building. And it turns out that while I was 30 minutes late everyone else was even later because no one had announced what time the group was to meet and they'd changed the time. (I'd guess 7:30 and it turns out that typically they meet at 8. . . thus I was actually perfectly on time.)

When W and I were introduced (I don't recall the exact process) there was a little flicker of recognition from him. Apparently E had forewarned him of my attending FHE that night. Physically W is (was) not my usual type. My (then) usual type are were scrawny, geeky boys who inspired me to write the dating rule, "I reserve the right to blow away first in a strong wind." (I'm a thin gal but I so hate guys making me feel large.) W was older (hard to refer to him as "boy"), darker haired (I tend to prefer blonds), and fit (later I learned he'd just recently run a marathon). More importantly his potluck offering was ham - which is the best meat in the world just under bacon and just above turkey deli slices. Yay ham, oh delicious ham. It also helped that I was starving because I hadn't yet eaten dinner.

Um, should I be worried I just wrote as much about ham as I did W? He really is too good a person to be compared to a hunk of meat. It was a completely unintentional comparison, but also too amusing a meta commentary to really be edited or removed.

Anyway, so yeah, a not-my-usual-looking guy who brought yummy ham to a potluck. (By theory the potluck theme was "Easter and Passover," but no one pays any attention to potluck themes.)

After the FHE lesson, I directly struck up a conversation with W. My typical style in the situation would be to wait for the guy to make the first move. In this case, there was no denying that he was the reason I was there and I certainly wasn't going to have all the effort of getting there to go to waste. I was going to figure out if he was worth the effort immediately. Besides, he brought ham, and that made me think him worth bending my own code of operations.

W and I start chatting. And we chat for a long time. I can't recall about what. We chatting so long that, well, um, wehadtobekickedoutoftheapartment and I'm really embarrassed that I overstepped the bounds of courtesy on that one but I didn't notice anything at all really 'cause W was interesting to talk to. Somewhere in there there were tentative plans for a date and an exchange of phone numbers.

It was a long drive back to my area of Austin, but I'd say it was a successful potential A and B into AB FHE. "I'm glad I went to FHE." Me too. Yay.