“THE THING”…aka The LDR
OK, Gang, let’s see if we can talk about the “Thing,” and yes it will probably be another two parter, or to be continued. To say that the year 2020, was a crazy year, would be equivalent to calling the grand canyon a ditch. There was so much misery for so many people in so many ways. It was just awful with all of the death, and loss of jobs , income, and displacement. It was global and something that most people had only read about in history books, since this last came to past. As if the world wasn’t already fragmented enough with social media post, from people safely tucked away in their own little part of the world. Now the rest of the world, the extroverts, those who actually like going outside and doing stuff, were told that they could no longer do thier thing. Restaurants closed, movie theaters, concert venues, sporting events, and the list goes on and on. Basically the world came to a serious “its a time to pump the brakes ” it virtually effected everyone’s lives, and we quickly became divided in to the essential and the nonessential. To give it a proper prospectious , 2020 will surpass other dates in history and leave them in the dust. I’m talking, pearl Harbor, the Kennedy assassination, man walking on the moon, the challenger explosion, and yes even 9/11, as tragic as that was. The Corona virus, has taken so many more lives, that it dwarfs even Gettysburg, which was ,one of the bloodiest times in U.S history. There are children who will not remember a time without face mask.
While 2020 was horrific on so many levels, it wasn’t all bad. I believe that God is always working, even when we can’t see it, or understand it. I know that there are non- believers out there in the audience, and you question His existence and His presence throughout all of this, but He is there, and things could have always been so much worse. I’m not trying to stifle anyone’s pain from loss, whether it be a loved one, or some other tragedy that befell you during this difficult time. I tip my hat and give a resounding round of applause for the essential and emergency workers, who got out there and did what had to be done. So, to all of nurses, doctors, police, fireman, paramedics, and again the list goes on and on, truck drivers who tried to keep the supply chain going. The list of heroes was vast and yet surprising. There were countless acts of sacrifice, of people reaching out and helping thier neighbors. One of my deepest memories was of the older couples whom had spent almost thier entire life with one partner, choosing to stick by the other’s side, once they became ill, even though, they knew for the most part that they were signing thier own death certificate. There is beauty in life, and also sometimes in death as well . This has been a little recap and doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of all that took place.
I want to flip the script a little bit. I was trying to set a back drop for the “Thing”. I want to share a little bit about the latter part of my 2020. I know that there will always be naysayers, but if you can hang on to the end, tell me if you see God’s hand in this. Some of you may say that it is just a bunch of strange coinsodenses, and I will tell you that when I pray coinsodenses happen, and when I don’t pray that they don’t. Ok, so here we go, I found myself on a dating site, feeling as if I was in a good place for meeting someone. For me that meant that I was emotionally healthy and available. I can remember times , when that was not true in my life, and it was desaterious. If you have ever been there, then you know the drudgery of digging through one profile after the other. I think of myself as a polite online dater, and what I mean by that is, if someone contacts me and I’m not interested for whatever reason, I usually will thank them for their interest, and wish them all the best in their search . I feel as if that is the polite thing to do, when so many people will not take the time, as if they are to good or more important than someone else. We are all seeking something and it is usually a needle in the hay stack. Ok, this journey began with me commenting on how beautiful this woman’s eyes were, they were a beautiful blue- green . So I work overnight, I love my job, not always crazy about the hours, and it does pay the bills, which is important. I’m at work one night and she replies a thank you to the compliment I gave her about her beautiful eyes. Already a plus, because, most people would choose to say nothing. Her follow up to me was, are you watching this crazy debate,? Trump& Biden going at it. I told her no and informed her that I was working. We sent messages back and forth that evening through the app which takes a little more time than just a straight text message. I guess we put one another at ease, and so we exchanged phone numbers, we were both probably were thinking whats the difference, because I was in Virginia and she was in Massachusetts. This may sound strange, but people do reach out to one another from across the country and most of the time they may chat for a day or two and then move on, I had no expectation that this would be anything other than that. As the first evening continued to progress we soon discovered that we were both in opposite camps politically. I got the impression that she wasn’t really a fan of Mr. Biden, but she was fed up with Trump on Twitter, and I agreed with her on that. We talked about our jobs and discovered that we were both consider essential workers. So she was coming in from a long day and my night was basically getting started. As we kinda hit it off, shared a couple of jokes, and a little bit about family. We both have two kids, and both have elderly mothers who keep our lives interesting. I’m not really sure how this happened, but we found ourselves on the phone every evening while I was at work, and in the mornings before she headed out to work, and most times on her way to work. So the picture is , she works days and I’m a night guy, not really, but just for work purposes. Then a strange set of occurrences took place. I found myself off for vacation the week of Thanksgiving. That never happens, because I have a coworker who has senioty over me and that is his first go to every year without fail, when we bid vacations. This year he had a son graduating from boot camp, so someone else snatched the week up, and then that person quit, and it fell to me. I have family and a very dear friend who just moved to New England that summer and he was dying for me to come up and see his new place. So , my online buddy , whom we shall call, Ms .Annomuis, I asked her how she felt about us meeting up. She thought it was a great idea, and I believe that was the birth of our actual relationship. See in the game of online dating, its about getting to be face to face with someone. She had already told me that she wasn’t a fan of FaceTime, and frankly neither was I, but I was thinking that it was better than nothing at all. I quickly became excited about the possibility of a face to face, even with both of our jobs putting restrictions on travel because of covid. I’ve always been more of a ask for forgiveness guy, than ask for permission type. So thirty one days after our first conversation we were set to meet. We were all set to meet at a neutral location. I was driving up and she was driving down. The meeting place was a bar in providence R.I, which she swore had the best burgers ever. I arrived a little bit early because I wasn’t sure where I was going and she was a few minutes late because she was coming from work. It was a Monday and it was raining in Providence. We were supposed to meet at a restaurant/ bar called Abbey’s, but when I arrived it didn’t have much for a parking lot and I ended up across the street at a bakery. The one thing that we hadn’t considered was the ever changing operating hours due to covid. The restaurant was closed. We spoke as she was enroute to meet me and her primary focus was that her hair was a mess . Keep in mind up until this point we had only seen each other’s profile pictures. The moment of truth, she shows up and we both jump out of our perspective vehicles and size one another up. Man!!, was i impressed, she was gorgeous and definitely did not look her age. She popped out of the car and had on the cutest pair of little rain boots. We embraced, and all of the hours on the phone and text messages had come to a culmination. We were both slightly nervous as would probably be expected. We were trying to come up with a back up plan, since the restaurant was closed. I ended up in her car, and we headed out with small banter about the weather and our travels to meet one another . She thought it a good idea to take me downtown to a place that is like a outdoor mall/ art gallery. We walked for a little bit and it got chilly, so we headed back to her car, she basically threw me her car keys, and said you drive!. So ,I got under the wheel of her car, not totally comfortable with that, and with no idea as to where I was going and quickly discovered that I was in a part of town with alot of one way streets. Somehow we managed to get out on the highway and we were just driving, I had no idea as to where to, and honestly at this point I really didn’t care. I was totally captivated by her, the accent, and little did I know at the time, something that would become one of my all time favorites, her chuckle. As we were driving along, we somehow had hit upon a story, that she had began to tell me about weeks earlier, but it was to emotional for her to get into it over the phone. As she opened up and shared with me about this gut wrenching situation involving her son, while he was in California, she revealed to me part of her soul that went beyond just motherhood. Some people encounter this and they think that a person is just tender hearted, but as I realized that it was so much more than that, I thought to myself that this would be someone very easy to fall in love with. I don’t remember all that I shared with her that day, but I hung on her every word, like I have never done with anyone else before. Eventually the butterflies subsided and the appetite kick in. We found ourselves at a mall, with a great Italian restaurant, I’m butchering the name here, but lets try “Bartuccis”. She shared with me that she had worked as a server there during college, but not at that particular location. We had a great server, and because of covid, it felt as if we had the place all to ourselves. The conversations was free flowing like beer at frat party. We didn’t share one awkward pause of silence . I didn’t share this earlier but she had sent me a video earlier on about ” breaking the barrier “. For some of you, you get it, and for others, I’m going to have to spell it out. It was a video about couples farting in front of one another, and to this day, I don’t believe that we have done that. Its something very relaxing and I’m not sure that comforting is the right word, but it helps to set you at ease if you can share a fart joke with your date. For me its like, if you can talk about that, it makes other things not so uncomfortable, and that is exactly what took place. So, there were two other things that were lurking beneath lunch that day. Oddly enough, my stomach had been on the war path that day, and I never discovered why. That was little unsettling, or disgusting depending on your view point. The other thing was , let’s say, pretty remarkable, at least from my vantage point. It was the top or blouse that she was wearing that day. I felt as if her girls were going to make a Janet Jackson appearance any second. Let me clarify before you get the wrong impression here. I’m no fashion expert by any means and this woman was impeccably dressed, but that little blue top, that’s right, I remember the color of that blouse…lol. There was just something about the design of it that when she moved in a certain way or direction, that I thought that I was going to get a little extra . However, wardrobe malfunction did not present itself, but being a guy, it added its own flavor to lunch that day. We talked well into the evening, to where we got handed off from one server to the other. Again, covid, they weren’t turning over tables, nor people waiting to be seated. As it got darker outside, I found myself wishing that this day and date didn’t have to end. Honestly when I got my head out of wherever it had been all afternoon, I had no idea of where I was, or how long it was going to take me to get back to my friends place. Earlier we had aimlessly driven without regards to where, and we had actually found ourselves back closer to her neck of the woods than at our original neutral spot that we had agreed upon. No worries here, to me, that just meant that we got to spend more time together as we headed back south. We had left my vehicle in a Walmart parking lot, so we venture back there and now that it was night, it had a little bit of a sketchy feel to it. We popped into Walmart for something, not sure what our original intent was, but I remember picking up some Diet Dr. Pepper soft drinks for my friend because they don’t sell them in his neck of the woods. And Ms. Annomuis was in search of something for her upcoming Thanksgiving dinner, she allowed me to buy her a couple of turkey roasting bags, maybe thats what we went in for originally. Ok, so we get back to the car, I start mine up to get it warmed up and jump back in on the passenger side of her car. We were recapping the day and fumbling around with, what would be next, or a follow up. In my mind we had gone from earlier butterflies to someone whom I felt I had known alot longer than I actually had. I thought we had covered so much over the phone the previous month , that I really was a little blindsided by all additional connection of that one day. It was like shopping online for a new car, and looking at all the angles of the pictures and the options, but now I’m at the dealership and everything fails in comparison to the new car smell and the performance behind the wheel. Well it was time to say good night and for us both to return to our neutral corners. I’m a little old fashioned and I don’t have any hard and fast rules about good night kisses or first kisses on first dates or whatever, so honest to God, no expectation here. What ensued was quite remarkable and surprising, we had some of the most passionate tongue swabbing that I had been apart of in some time. Yes, in the parking lot of the sketchy Walmart . I think we got a little caught up in the day, not in a bad way, but you have to remember all of talking and texting that had gone on for the previous thirty days, it was building up to something, and I guess for me, it was the perfect ending for a perfect day, minus the stomach issues. Looking back, I’m really grateful for being older and having a little tiny tinny bit of self control, because it could have easily been lost that night. I’m going to end this here, and I know that I spent significant time and went into some detail about the beginning of things, and in my next post, I’m going to try and sum up the next ten months and share our progression. If I left you on some romantic high, and feel as if you can’t wait for the follow up. Let me bring you back down to earth , just a little bit. I still had an almost two hour drive back south and a trip or two at the rest area, because my stomach was still doing whatever it had been doing that day. I never thought of myself as a hopeless romantic, however I will admit to my heart having becoming some what tender as I’ve gotten older. That being said, as I was driving back that night, I felt as if I had kissed the last pair of lips that I ever wanted to kiss.
Sandy The Southerner
