We met on a cool fall day in 2002, when I was a college freshman and he was a sophomore. I'd woken up late for my 8am class and had no time to get myself ready before having to run across campus to make it to class on time. So I jumped out of bed, threw my hair in a ponytail, skipped any makeup at all, and hopped into the first set of clothes I could find -- black sweats and a hoodie. I made it to class on time, but was a shaky wreck by the time I got there. It was, literally, the third week of classes and I hadn't yet mastered the art of being cool, calm, and collected while on campus. {Side note: I'm 30 years old now and I still haven't mastered being cool, calm, and collected anywhere}. I took my seat in the back corner of the classroom and avoided eye contact with anybody. We took a quiz that day, and I remember just trying to focus and breeze through it while visions of coffee mugs {which I'd had to forgo that morning, thanks to my lateness} danced in my head.
Walking out of class that morning, I kept my head down {are you guys getting a picture now of how socially awkward I am?} but lifted it up just in time to see this guy standing in front of me and holding the door open. I jogged a bit to catch up {because nothing is as awkward as someone holding a door open for you when you're about a hundred feet away}, smiled and thanked him for holding it. I walked through the door and then returned the favor by holding it open on the other side, expecting that to be it. So I was surprised when I heard that same guy ask, "How do you think you did on the quiz?"
I don't remember the answer I gave, but I'm sure it was stupid and awkward and there's a very good chance that it had nothing to do with the quiz or his question. From there, we started walking toward the dorms and talking, and I distinctly remember how easy it was to talk to him. Normally, I was a ball of nerves when it came to talking people, boys especially, and I was shocked at how easily I was able to have a conversation with this one. I learned that his name was Scott and he was a sophomore, that he'd almost gone to Widener University, and that he lived in the same dorm I did, one floor above me. Couple that with the fact that we had the same class together 3 days a week and it was a wonder we'd never bumped into each other before.
We parted at the front door of our dorm that day when a group of his friends bombarded him with a football and I didn't talk to him again for a week. I'd convinced myself that our walk and talk together the week before had been nothing more than him killing time and being forced to be polite to me since we were both headed to the same place. I wouldn't sit next to him in class, refusing to be the weird girl who gets all creepy after one innocent conversation, and I really and truly thought that he was "out of my league". He talked to everyone around him in class and seemed to have a ton of friends and, after that day that we took the quiz, we didn't have another opportunity to walk together again. So, in the corner I stayed.
Fast forward another few days. I'm sitting at the desk in my room, trying to get some work done while simultaneously being polite to and ignoring my less-than-hygienic roommate at the time. {Another side note: It took me 3 years and 3 different roommates before I found one that I REALLY liked and got along with...and we're still friends today. :-) } There was a knock at our door and my roommate hopped off her bed to answer it, both of us thinking it was her boyfriend. Imagine my shock when in walked Scott with a polite hello to my roommate and a smile for me. He asked me if I'd finished the homework for our class and if I could give him a hand with a few of the questions he was having trouble with, and I told him I was just finishing up the last couple of questions and offered to stop by his room in a few minutes with it.
I didn't have a single question of that homework answered. Hadn't even started it.
Fifteen minutes later, I'd charged through the homework packet and found myself knocking at the door to Scott's room. Turns out, he didn't need any help, just wanted an excuse to see me outside of class. So we got to talking about football after I noticed a Redskins helmet on his dresser {I know less than nothing about football} which turned into us talking more over lunch. Over the next few weeks, we had lunch and dinner together most days, he invited me to come watch his hockey games, I spent pretty much every waking moment hanging out in his dorm room, and we met each other's parents. Meeting him made my first year at college {and all the ones after} so much more wonderful than I'd expected it to be, and I'm thankful every day that he "needed help" with his homework.
The story of how we met isn't a fairy tale, but it is to me. Scott came along at a time in my life when I needed him and didn't even know it. He makes me a better person, he makes me feel loved, and there's no one else I'd rather stumble and plow through life with. During our walk back to the dorms that first day, I had no idea that I was talking to my future husband, but I had a very strong suspicion that he was going to be playing a very important role in my life. The day that we met was an ordinary one for everyone else but, for me, it was downright extraordinary in the way that everything aligned so that he and I bumped into each other. From waking up late, to leaving class at just the right moment, to miraculously overcoming my complete inability to have a normal conversation with a member of the opposite sex, to living just one floor apart in the same building...it was like everything just fell into place beautifully on that day.
And the rest is history.
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