Love Story (One Plus One)

Those who have known me since I was a teenager (!) know that the answer to my Love Story guessing game is a, b, and c. Several commenters were correct, though the first one with the right answer was anonymous so I don't know who to call the unofficial winner. (Updated to say the anonymous commenter has been identified as my friend, Joanie!) 

In the spring of 1997, when I was a junior in high school, I got a part-time job at the county library shelving books.  I worked in the children's section alone so it was several weeks before I was introduced to any of the other shelvers, but one particularly slow evening, my friend, Ginger, who also my co-worker, took me over to the other side of the library and introduced me.  "This is Jen.  And this is Kim.  And this is Brian," she said. We smiled and said hello... but Brian has no memory of meeting at all!

It's funny because we think we may have even met years before.  When I was in fifth grade, I played clarinet in the elementary school band.  Brian was a sixth grader at another school and played trombone.  The two schools shared a band director and one year he asked several of us at my school to play in the spring concert at Brian's elementary school.  I remember the concert and Brian remembers the concert, but we don't remember each other!

So anyway...Brian graduated high school a month after we were introduced, got another job, and quit the library.  I don't think I even knew he had left since I had a boyfriend and was pretty absorbed in my social life. The following summer, though, was different.  I graduated high school and began working the front desk at the library.  Some time in the year, Brian had come back to the library and was also working the front desk.  My boyfriend moved away to college out of state and our relationship fizzled.

Brian was assigned to train me on the library's computer system so we began to get to know each other.  By November when we spent a weekend setting up for the library book sale, we had no problem talking for two days straight.  At Christmas, a friend and I went with Brian and his brother to a Christmas production at their church and out to dinner.  By winter, we would scan the calendar at work for any day we were assigned the same shift so we could take break together.  By spring, we registered for the same classes at the community college we were attending together. 

It was the summer of 1999.  Brian was twenty and I was barely nineteen.  My parents were still hesitant about us spending too much time alone, but we spent every spare minute together with groups of friends or at my house.  My six-year-old sister declared that she wanted to marry "B" as she called him...and I was beginning to think I wanted to marry him, too.

(Part 2: Two Hearts )
(Part 3: Countdown To Our Day)