When Harry Met Sally - Chapter 1

Tiffany had been telling me for quite some time about their friend, "Jeff Tidyman", always first and last name included in the description.  Tiffany and her husband, Paul, went to college with Mr. T and in that time became locked into a lifetime of friendship with him.  Throughout the years, stories of Mr. T revealed that he was what I would term, a "wild man".  At one point he was running for State Representative, then he was in Iraq with the Marine Corps, then onto Egypt to study Arabic, then back to Iraq, and on and on and on.  I could hardly keep up with the stories of his voracious appetite to conquer the world.

Regardless, I was intrigued.  So when Tiffany came and said, "Jeff Tidyman needs a date for the Marine Corps Ball.  Do you want to go with him?" I replied, "Ummm, I think that a guy who is that adventurous would probably find me boring, but sure."  I immediately started stressing about how I was going to spend an entire evening with such a wild man, especially one who was vastly more intelligent than me.  I needed to create the illusion that I could hold my own in the smarts department.  I pictured myself making little blunders like saying, "Is it 'Arabic' or 'Aramaic'?" and "I always accidentally say Marine Corpse Ball instead of Marine Corps Ball.  Isn't that so funny!?!"  I was a total airhead back then.  As opposed to now.  Now I'm super awesome at intellectual stuff.  Ask me anything.

Anyway, back in the day I was working at a church in Kansas City, managing the Children's Department and helping with the Missions Team here and there.  Life was good, for the most part.  Unlike most girls who were approaching 30, I was not worried about getting married.  In fact, I was afraid of it; commitment phobia to the core.  The guys who liked me, I didn't like.  And I always fell for guys that were totally unattainable, and therefore, uninterested in yours truly.  I think if Mr. T and I ended up going to the Marine "Corpse" Ball together, we wouldn't have worked out.  The timing would have been all wrong.

We didn't go together because, as it so happened, Mr. T sent out a request to several friends saying he needed a date.  Several friends responded.  He ended up taking someone who was more on the way.  Kansas City was quite the detour after all.  I was greeted by a nice bouquet of flowers at the office one day.  I still have the card he wrote expressing his apologies for not choosing me to be his date.  It was the first of many bouquets I would receive from the famous Jeff Tidyman.  But future bouquets would have to wait.

We didn't meet for the first time until five years later.