The Terrible Catsafterme

After our little gathering following the wedding of my cousin Susan and her brother Charles on October 21, 2000, it took me a week or so to decide how best to pursue Carolyn (seen with me at right in our very first picture together - taken at my Dad’s wedding). Simply put, it was a delicate situation. No one even knew that Lisa and I had effectively split up. The following week, during one of our many afternoons of playing pool together at Fox and Hound, I asked my cousin Chris (who is also Susan’s brother) if he might get Carolyn’s phone number for me. I emailed him later in the week and he said that although he couldn’t find it, he simply looked it up in the phone book. Carolyn at that time was living in Kettering with her Dad.

I also decided to let fate play its part in deciding my next move. I distinctly remember a smoking break down at the Kroger Tri-County office, amidst management training testing, where I flipped a coin to decide if I should go after Carolyn or make another last ditch effort with Lisa. The coin decided in favor of Lisa. I decided otherwise. I went home that Friday and made a call to the Gelm household. I was forced to leave an awkward message just asking what plans if any she had for the weekend. When I came home from work on Saturday, I was ecstatic to see on the caller ID that she had returned my call.

When we finally spoke, she invited me to go along with her and a group of friends to a corn maze that night. Naturally, she added that I was welcome to bring my wife along. Since the corn maze was in Yellow Springs, she actually picked me up at my house. I sat up front with her, while her Mom sat in the back seat. There were other friends in her car and also another car making the trip as well. I’m not entirely sure who all was there but I think Chris came along as did his friend Chuck and Carolyn’s friends Jack and Katy. Carolyn was wearing a blue jacket and her blonde hair and pink lips sparkled in the moonlight. The corn maze was a bust, though. It was closed for whatever reason so we ended up at Young’s Dairy for ice cream.

The next night we made yet another attempt at a corn maze. This time she asked me to come to her Dad’s house where her college graduation party was being held. Also this time around, her sisters Jeanette and Rosemarie came along as did her friend Bekki. Some other guy kept addressing Carolyn as ‘Red’ - a nickname I didn’t understand for the longest time. Turns out that she had died her hair red not long before for a beauty school student friend’s project. I also got to see Carolyn freak out for the first time, when she thought Bekki had disappeared from the gas station, when in fact she had jumped into Jeanette’s car. And so the madness began…Turns out this corn maze was closed as well, so we ended up bowling. During our time on the alley (during which as I recall, I had an extremely poor showing of bowling skills), I gave Carolyn the first hint that I was interested in her, when I asked her if I could share her chapstick - meaning the batch that she had just applied to her lips. After bowling, she took me back to her Dad’s place where my car was. We had a nice chat during which I informed her that Lisa and I had separated.

On Monday night, October 30, Carolyn and I took Ashleigh and Briana to Captain Bogey’s, a mini golf and game spot in Beavercreek. We were trying to find a corn maze or haunted house, but this is the best we could come up with. In essence, this was our first date in some regards - as she now knew that I was single and available. However, still nothing happened after this date, and she rejected my offer to sleep over at my house after we came back and watched It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown. She made a conscious effort not to kiss me, leaving my lips dangling out there at the end of the evening.

Tuesday night was Trick or Treat. In all fairness, I still hadn’t professed that I was interested in her, so it was her intuition that kicked in and informed her that I was looking for more than a friend. And the fact that she passed on being with her nieces Alex and Madi for the holiday in order to come along with me and Ashleigh and Briana told me that she just might be interested as well. We went trick or treating around the Beavercreek neighborhood of Briana’s friend Stacey. Billy came along as well. I’m sure he was taken aback to see us flirting as we were. Remember that no one knew about Lisa yet. We came back to my place after beggars night and I finally spilled the beans and told Carolyn that I liked her. I had to when I put my head on her chest and felt her heart beating in overdrive. I asked her why her heart was palpitating so and she in turn nervously asked what exactly I was up to. I told her that I was interested in dating her and I then told her that it was okay to kiss me now…and the rest was history.

For the next couple of weeks, we lived in a dreamworld, hanging out on my couch night after night…watching Street Smarts and Change of Heart on Comedy Central…hearing commercials for the Rob Reiner Celebrity Roast and an 80’s rock collection that included the Waitresses “I Know What Boys Like.” The alarm would go off upstairs bright and early, so I would trudge up there, hit snooze, and then go back to the couch.

From the way that I can vividly recall these days, it is clear that they were some of the happiest of my life. We never made it to the corn maze that year. But we had some great times going out to eat (Bravo! was her favorite), going to movies (where I taught her how to rid your fingers of popcorn butter by wiping them on the inside of your pant leg; we were seeing Scary Movie, a highly inappropriate spoof that we dragged Ashleigh along to), and going over to Jeanette’s (making at least once frantic stop at Books and Co. along the way - to use the facilities). We were happy and Ashleigh was happy. She liked that Carolyn would often cook for us. Our first family dinner together was at Carolyn’s Dad’s place where she prepared us a chicken and rice meal.

Little by little, our families were suprised to see us snuggling up together. During a video showing of Coyote Ugly at Jeanette’s house, I think Charles may have been a bit surprised to see Carolyn pounce into my lap. As was her Mom during a visit from us and Carolyn’s friends Jack and Katy. Neither of her parents cared for my marital status too much. But who could blame them?

Carolyn and I were convinced that we had entered one another’s lives at just the right time - even attributing it to fate. Going into the holidays and another family wedding, it was good to have someone.

2000 will continue…

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 14th, 2007 at 6:18 am and is filed under 2000's - Early. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.