How We Met

Well today is our 24th anniversary, that is why 918 is our lottery numbers. We met 25 years ago on Sept. 30th my birthday. We both worked in the same store, it was a store like Walmarts just on a smaller scale. The name of the store was Howards if any of you remember that store, it has long been out of business now. Anyway Jerry had been seeing me at work and really wanted to meet me and go out with me but he was VERY shy. I was so lost in my own world that I had never even noticed Jerry at work. Anyway he finally got a friend of his (and mine also) to tell me he wanted to go out with me. I said sure we are having a party at the Cotton Club tonight for my birthday, tell him to come up there. I still didn't even know what he looked like. Well he showed up at the club and the friend introduced us. We danced one dance, then another, then another (neither one of us was great at dancing but it was slow country and western so that made it pretty easy). Then after the club closed we were taking the party over to another friends house to continue. They sent Jerry and I over to the next town to pick up alcohol cause the town we lived in was dry. We talked and talked the whole way there and back, then we droped the alcohol off and went driving around and kept talking. We finally stopped in the parking lot where I had left my car and talked until 4:00 AM that morning. We talked about everything, what we wanted out of life, what kind of life we wanted, how many kids we wanted, how we wanted our marriage to be after all we weren't boyfriend and girlfriend so it was like we could be totally honest with each other. Jerry was a real straight laced goody two shoes and I was rather on the wild party girl side but guess he saw something in me he really liked cause we started dating every day after that. Like I said he was very shy around most people and I was his opposite, I never met a stranger and back in those days I kept everyone laughing all the time. The laughter was to hide some very painful things that had happened in my real life but that was the way I handled it because everyone liked to laugh and didn't look much futher, Jerry did. And I was more honest with Jerry than I had ever been with anyone except I still had not told him the Big ugly secret that I had been running from and hiding from. Six months from the time we met he gave me a ring and asked me to marry him, I was so excited and I said yes. Then I got scared, marriage was for a life time is how I saw it, not a as long as it is working good thing and split up when it isn't working thing. And the longest I had ever stuck with a boyfriend or job or nearly anything up to that point was about 6 months so my fear took over and I got into a big arguement with Jerry and made him really mad (probably hurt his feelings more than anything) so he would break up with me. Well he did and I went back to my partying and friends that required no real commitment or honesty on my part. Jerry moved to Tyler Texas as he had gotten on with the phone company at that point. He came to town one day and came up to work and asked me out for lunch, I went, we talked and parted as friends, him telling me if I was ever in Tyler to stop in and see him. About a month later it so happened I was out riding around by myself and ended up an hour from home in Tyler Texas at 12:00 midnight. I went and knocked on his door and surprisingly he answered the door with a paint brush in his hand, he was painting his apartment. I came in and we sat down and started talking, we talked all night and by morning we were setting a wedding date. We got married on Sept. 18th a couple of weeks away from my 23rd birthday. I eventually (about a year into the marriage) told Jerry the deep dark secret and he loved me just as much then as he does now. I started going to counseling and he stood by my side and I got pretty crazy at times, pretty depressed at times but as I worked through my problems he stood by my side. I'm not sure I would have ever found a more perfect guy than Jerry, he is so gentle, kind and loving. I often wonder how I got so lucky, why God decided to bless me with him. I sure don't think I deserved him and we were so opposite in the beginning. Of course the party girl wasn't really who I was, it was who I was pretending to be but I ended up with a guy who totally loved me. We complete each other, we enjoy the same stuff and after 24 years we love each other as much today as we did the day we said "I do". I still can make him laugh but the difference is it is real now and not me just pretending to be someone I'm not.