Our Story...How We Met

As I have been checking out other blogs lately, it occurred to me that the ones I liked to read are a bit more personal. My own "about me" section doesn't even mention my name. I tried to start it off with "Hi, my name is Jamie, and I am 24 years old..." but it just wouldn't come out that way. So I thought I'd post something a little more personal today. I won't write my life story, because although I can't even spontaneously think of a single legitimately exciting thing that has ever happened in the course of the last two and a half decades, I'd somehow manage to use up the first 1000 words on birth through kindergarten. So, instead, I'll just paste the story of how Josh and I met, which I wrote but never used for our wedding website on The Knot, because, true to my usual form, I forgot about the website and never completed it.

Josh and I at the tree swing on my parents' property where he proposed. [Photo by Pizzuti Studios]

Our Story

Josh and Jamie met on Myspace in 2005 when Josh emailed Jamie to inquire as to whether or not Pat Crotty was her father. Resisting the impulse to pull the shades and check the locks, Jamie's curiosity drove her to respond, admitting that yes, Pat Crotty was her father, and how did Josh come about this information? Such was the beginning of their friendship...As it turned out, Josh knew of Jamie's family through numerous mutual basketball associations, including Sir Cumference (known to some as Mr. Arakelion), Socks (a ref with whom Jamie once clashed over the issue of one particular wet whistle), and many others. They also discovered that they had many non-basketball-related acquaintances in common, including the Browns, who went to church with the Crottys and had lived on the same road as the Drukes back when Taber Brown was to Forrest Gump as Mary-Kate is to Ashley. Finally, their e-relationship came to a pivotal point when Josh invited Jamie to attend a movie that Sunday night. Fearing those met on the web--and pretty much fearing life in general (Jamie has been known to run and hide when the doorbell rings)--Jamie was, unsurprisingly, more than a bit wary of Josh's invitation. Instead, Jamie invited Josh to bring a friend to her house, secluded on a hill in the forest of Westmoreland, to watch a movie on Sunday afternoon when her parents and brother would be away at an AAU tournament. It wasn't until much later that, upon reflection and the chiding of several wiser minds, Jamie realized it could have ended very badly (much worse than the well-lit movie theater parking lot). Fortunately, Josh was not a creepy psychopath, and he arrived with his friend Justin a fashionable five minutes late to watch the movie. Months later, Josh and Justin admitted that they had actually been on target to appear at the Crotty residence ten minutes early, but had taken the scenic route (which is to say they continued past our driveway for several minutes before taking a u-turn when the danger of committing the terrible faux pas had expired). Meanwhile, Jamie and her sister Dana sat crouched on the stairway, with a view of the driveway. Upon the surprisingly swift parking job, the two girls dove to the hallway floor in order to avoid exposing their own less-than-socially-acceptable behavior through the nearby windows which they had previously been gawking. Hence, Jamie opened the door to greet them (after the doorbell had been rung and the appropriate sixty seconds had passed) with a large red mark on her chin due to a blow dealt by Dana's flying foot in their scramble for the floor. (When necessary, Dana actually can move pretty fast). The first half hour was passed by Jamie randomly breaking the excruciating silences with involuntary laughter while they stood awkwardly in the kitchen, unable to explain her periodic guffaws, lest she admit the scene in the moments prior to the boys' entrance. Someone finally suggested that they watch the movie, and Josh and Justin demolished whatever cool points they had racked up by arriving five minutes late when they retrieved from the car a collection of DVDs rivaling Blockbuster's as options they had brought along. Actually, forget that--the cool points had long since evaporated in the atomic bomb of cologne that went off when Jamie first opened the door. Finally, after another half hour of "I don't care"s and "No seriously, one of you pick"s, someone suggested Man on Fire. The next two hours and twenty-six minutes were nearly as painful as the forced conversation in the kitchen, due to the fact that Jamie had imbibed more water than she was able to hold, having had nothing else to do with her hands whilst standing in the kitchen trying to form intelligent conversation with complete strangers. Never having been the camel her friend Christine was, Jamie made frequent trips to the restroom. However, having once heard her mother's friend tinkling at their house in Maryland at the impressionable age of six or so, Jamie had forever had a fear of micturating while in close proximity to guests. That being the case, Jamie felt the need to announce each time she left the room that she was going upstairs to use the restroom instead of using the one off the living room--and to clarify that she had drank an excessive amount of water, so they didn't think she had some sort of bladder problem. This occurred three times during the course of the film. For the remainder of the showing (when Jamie was actually seated), she and Dana nestled into one corner of the L-shaped couch, and Josh and Justin sat clustered at the opposite end closest to the downstairs bathroom which Jamie refused to use. During the sole "romantic" scene, which featured a husband and wife kissing in their bedroom, Jamie erupted into giggles again, leaving Josh and Justin to puzzle over her maturity level. After the movie ended, the group stayed seated in the living room, with the two pairs separated by the length of the couch (leaving a fly on the wall to question the maturity level of all four). Though Justin and Dana locked in Most Valuable Conversationalists early on, Jamie and Josh occasionally tossed up a short phrase or a grunt. When he did manage to add to an exchange, Josh determinedly avoided Jamie's gaze. Also notable is the fact that Josh managed to blush about 98 percent of the time that he was there. But perhaps the most memorable was the point at which Josh made a comment about playing a lot of golf when he was older. Justin responded, "Yeah, if the wife lets you." And, like a ten-year-old boy, Josh quickly retorted that he was never getting married. Jamie thought, I bet I could change his mind...Okay, maybe she didn't really. But four years later, on June sixth at six o'clock in the evening, Josh is going to have to retract that statement...

[Photo by Pizzuti Studios]

....And that was just the first day we met. Aren't you glad I decided not to write my life story?