I figure if you are going to be reading my blog, you should know a few fundemental things about me. I was born (being very young at the time) in 1969, and grew up in a small town as an only child of a single mom. (I occasionally saw my dad and stepfamily, including my half-sister Misty, but not often). I dropped out of college and got married to Sam at age 20. He used to joke that he got a bachelor's degree, and I got a bachelor. LOL We stayed married for 20 years, and although we divorced in 2008, we remain close friends. Sam is a good man, but he and I just do better as friends than we did as husband and wife. We had a beautiful daughter named Debbie, now all grown up herself, who is the one who encouraged me to start this blog. And I married again in 2011, to a man named Eric, who keeps me laughing all the time. And the following is the story of how he and I met. You have to understand ahead of time that he and I are both what I like to call redneck geeks, which is a strange combination, and might I add difficult to find in a potential mate. It is easy where we live to find lots of "good ol' boy" rednecks, but most of them are not what you would strictly call geeks. In other words, they may know who Yoda is, but not necessarily who Admiral Ackbar is. Anyway, without further ado, here is the story ...
On October 31, 2009 I got dressed for the Halloween costume party of a Christian Singles’ Group. I decided to go as Luke Skywalker, and chose a costume based on what he was wearing when he faced Jabba the Hutt in Return of the Jedi. Not having much extra money to put into a costume, I asked my mother to sew an old brown sheet into a cape and wore a black shirt, black pants, and black shoes. I made sure that I wore a black glove on my right hand like the one Luke was wearing at the time, to cover his mechanical hand. And finally, to make sure that the uninitiated could tell what I was supposed to be, I carried a $9 plastic light saber from Wal-mart. However, this was actually a flaw in my costume, because Luke was not actually carrying his light saber in that scene; R2D2 had it at that time. But I knew that if I didn’t have the light saber, most people wouldn’t "get" what I was supposed to be (it proved true; one guy thought I was a hobbit until I pulled out the light saber). I remember joking to my best friend Eli that if I met someone who could call me on that costume flaw, I’d ask him to marry me right then.
One of the first people I noticed at the party was this swashbuckler, who was wearing a ruffled shirt and an eye patch, and carried a sword and dagger. I was interested, but various bad experiences with past guys had taught me to wait for him to make the first move. If he hadn’t talked to me first, we probably would not be married today! But he did speak to me, and the first thing he ever said to me, was, "I dressed as a Jedi last year!"
As we got to talking, it was like we were the only two people in the room. He said that not many people were "getting" his costume, because people were saying he was a pirate, but he was more of an Erroll Flynn type of swashbuckling hero. I said, "Yeah, your boots remind me a bit of that guy in The Princess Bride." And he said, "Oh yeah, ‘as you wish.’" For those of you who don’t know, in The Princess Bride, whenever the main character said the phrase "as you wish," what he really meant was "I love you." So I always joke with Eric that he told me I love you the first day we met.
I did not wait to see if he called me on the "flaw" in my costume of carrying the light saber, but pointed it out myself. But he did call me on another flaw. He said that Luke Skywalker in that scene was wearing a black glove. I pulled it out of my pocket to show to him; I had taken it off to eat my hot dog. But I joked, "But I don’t think Luke Skywalker’s glove said "Harley Davidson" on it in pink letters!"
Needless to say, we clicked immediately, and not just on things having to do with Star Wars. I found out that night that we were into the same kind of music and had other interests in common. But the most important thing was that we felt the same way about God, and put our relationship with Him first. He had ridden to the party with friends from church, and they came to tell him it was time to go. He asked for my number, and I wrote it on the first thing I found- a paper plate. (He still has the paper plate to this day, framed on the wall).
And so began a relationship that lasted almost two years before we got married (a year, 6 months, and 6 days ago as of this writing- I know that because we just celebrated our year-and-a-half anniversary, the day before Valentine’s Day). And as the wedding day approached, people kept asking me if I was getting nervous, and I would say, "No, not when it’s Eric!" Because every day, every moment that I spend with him makes me more certain that I want to spend all the rest of my days and moments with him. And over a year and a half of marriage has only confirmed that.
P.S. On the inside of his wedding ring, the engraving says, "As you wish."
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