03 January 2011

The Story

Everybody has their relationship story, I guess now that it's been nearly a year it's time I told mine.  I already laid out the background.  As much as I like to tell people when they ask how I met Hannah that "She was one of my high school girlfriend's friends."  I guess I'll go in to a little more detail about how we actually began dating.


It started in early May 2008 when I was helping Hannah and Jessica move their things home at the end of the semester.  Girls have a lot of things, and I was the only male helping pack up their cars.  Even so we all made a day of it, we had a lot of fun.  At the end of the night, after everyone was home and cars unpacked, Hannah and I were talking about our respective summer plans, and we each made sure we had the other's correct phone number.  For the first couple weeks Hannah and I got together every few days to go do something random.  Going to Nickelcade(I don't care how old you are, it's still fun to buy cheaply made prizes with tickets), going on hikes, exploring The Gateway, I still remember the first movie we saw together that summer was Prince Caspian.  After a few weeks we were getting together 5-6 times a week, we weren't dating, we were just friends making the most of our summer.  Thinking back makes me chuckle to myself, at one point we each set each other with a blind date and doubled up, let's just say neither of us have a future in match-making.  

Throughout the Summer we went on these things called Adventure Days, where we'd find a day we both had off of work and we'd fill an entire day, morning to night, with stuff to do.  If any of those had been considered dates they would have been the best.  The last one was the most memorable, we woke up early and went to the Museum of Natural History at the UofU and got in free for being the first visitors of the day.  If you ever get a chance to go to a University museum when no one else is around I highly recommend it.  It was way cool, as we were checking out the area where they clean, cast, and prep the dinosaur bones one of the workers poked their heads out and told us to come in and check out some stuff that wasn't on display.  After the Museum we ran down to The Gateway where the Chalk Art Festival was going on, also totally cool, definitely something to see each year.  We finished off the day at Discovery Gateway.  It's pretty much the new Children's Museum, it has a lot of hands on exhibits geared towards creativity and you can't really go in without your inner-child wanting to run wild, it really takes you back.


By the time August was beginning I came to the horrible realization that I wanted Hannah and I to be more than "Just Friends" and that if I was going to attempt a break from the "friend zone" I only had three weeks to pull it off.  I say it was horrible because anyone who has been in that situation know the inner turmoil that is weighing the risk and reward between remaining friends and attempting to break "the threshold."  I'm big on the pro/con, risk/reward strategy, I approach nearly every situation with it.  I finally decided that I was too afraid to try the just-get-it-out-there strategy and decided that I'd take a more transitional approach.  I eventually stepped out of my completely enamored state and attempted to see if I was getting any hints from Hannah one way or the other, I felt like I was getting the vibe that she was interested in me as well so I set my plan into motion.  Over the last two weeks I began planning more and more serious, intimate activities.


My plan was set.  Her birthday was two days after she moved in back up at school, that's when I'd make my final move and either be victorious or return home in shame and only see her when she came back my direction.  Everything was going according to plan and eventually the day came for her to move back the week before school began.  I was all set to help her move her things back, but unfortunately so was our friend Trevor...


Trevor was mostly Hannah's friend, I had met him through Hannah before and we had done a few things together through out the summer, including going on a group camp out in my favorite spot down in southern Utah.  There were other instances, but this camping trip was when it became really obvious that I had competition.  Many have heard of "woman's intuition," well if males have a gender-specific sixth sense it's how to detect a rival.  The hardest thing about being around Trevor and Hannah at the same time was that Trevor would always completely smother Hannah.  Now this camp out was at the very beginning of the period where I was interested in Hannah.  As hard as it was I resisted the urge, to the best of my ability, to avoid openly competing for Hannah's attention.  Back to the present...


Trevor had also volunteered to help her move, and let's face it, you don't turn down free moving help.  I had planned to stick around for the next day, as Hannah went to school entirely too far away to make two round-trips in a week.  Much to my dismay when Trevor became privy to this information he also resolved to hang around.  Needless to say I was, as were my plans, frustrated.  We ended up all going to dinner for Hannah's birthday together.  My plans were ruined and I had to get back, so I left feeling as though I had failed.


Some people call me extremely stubborn, I prefer tenacious or determined.  That week I decided it was clear that my plan could be recovered, after all I had already laid the foundation, plus I'm nothing if not adaptive.  I asked Hannah if she was coming home that weekend, and when she said that she was not I told her I'd pick her up Saturday night, because I wanted to take her to dinner.  She agreed and days later I was making the trek out once again.  At dinner it was made clear that Hannah felt the same way I did, I told her about my plan from the previous four weeks and we just laughed together.  That night we cuddled and kissed for the first time.  I know, kissing on the first date right?  Pfff... I was justified.  After that I made the trek out every weekend that she didn't go home.


Writing this all has really made me smile tonight, but it's also got me a little down, these days those few hours out to see Hannah seem an even smaller price to pay.  Now I'll go to bed while the happy memories are fresh...

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