My Gentleman Caller

Long-time readers of this website are probably familiar with my many joking references to batting my eyelashes at boys or making out with Frodo Baggins. But long-time friends will know that my real-life experience with romance is as lacking as my real-life experience with eating healthful foods, playing golf, talking to snakes, or compromising. I've always fallen into the "those who can't do, teach" camp when it comes to relationships, and that is where I expected to stay for many, many years to come.

Now, truthfully, that would have suited me just fine. I like cats, I often feel like an 83-year-old, and I've thus been training to be a cat lady since I could first screech "kitty!" and "tuna!" and "knit one, purl two!" But as I alluded to awkwardly blurted out in the previous entry, my days of eccentric coupon-clipping and crossword-solving have been put on hold because I have a boyfriend.

I'm still not sure the concept has fully sunk in, but that's only because the past few months have been a whirlwind of emotions. But first things first: introductions.

Sean and I have actually known each other for a while, as his family used to attend my church. Then, he and I went to high school together. His dad even taught my keyboarding / Microsoft Office class. We got to know each other a little better through study hall and going out for coffee a few times, but we fell out of contact a lot after I went off to college. (My fault. I'll admit it.)

Then last spring, Sean contacted me via Facebook, which led to talks on AIM, which led to talks on Skype, which led to us hanging out for the two weeks he was in town in August, which led to us obsessively spending every spare second together on Skype when he was in Scotland for the school year, which led to us being quite giddy about spending the summer together. Finally, on July 8, 2009 (seven eight nine!), Sean officially asked me, "So, do you still want to be my girlfriend?" and I said something extremely eloquent like, "Umm yeah duh."

I can't say that we really made much progress on my summer to-do list, but man did we have some good times. We discovered that our families are freakishly linked (our fathers own the same copies of The Hobbit and The Silmarillion, we at one point owned the same mailbox, his sister and I share a birthday, we own the same metronome, all of us have freckles under our right eyes ha! not really just seeing if you were still reading). We watched movies and TV shows and played video games. We went to the park. We went to the lake. We went downtown Chicago. We ate, we drank, and we even ate our drinks (chocolate-covered whiskey beans, anyone?). We talked about Tolkien and chess and religion and chess and Twitter and chess and Natalie Portman and chess. (The boy likes his chess.) We played piano and sang and danced and laughed and cried and hugged and kissed (shh!) and pretty much just had a wonderful summer getting reacquainted in a new and fabulous way.

In conclusion, I have a boyfriend now, and he is sweet and thoughtful and considerate and adorably anxious at times and pleasantly handsome all the time and a good, Christian man. Neither of us is perfect, but I feel like we have a mutually beneficial thing going on here that will take both of us to better places. And I'm really excited about that. :)