The Hubby

This is the month.  This is the month that the Hubby turns 30.  Holy cow, that is old.  I'm going to be married to a man in his 30s.  In honor of his upcoming birthday, I would like to reminisce a bit.  

The year is 1990-1992 (my memory is a bit fuzzy that far back.)  I had dated almost every boy in youth group at church, and I was starting to move on to their friends.  My occasional boyfriend/"we're just dating" guy Anthony had brought a couple of friends to church with him.  Finally.  There was Tommy, the really outgoing, nice friendly one, and then there was Brandon.  Brandon was tall and skinny, and he had a huge head "like an orange on a toothpick." (Name that movie reference!)  He had pink shorts on and some kind of bolo tie.  And pink socks.  And their may have been tassels on his shoes.  And I don't think he said a word to any girl from the years 1992-1997.  

I have a vague recollection of Skinny Brandon trying to have a conversation with me in the van on a youth group trip of some sort.  I tried my very best to ignore him, after all, I was Way Too Cool for the bolo tie guy.  I had bangs back then.  Bangs that stuck up and were hairsprayed and shellacked to within an inch of their life.  Very cool.  I had no time for him.  After all, I still had about 2 dozen guys to date.  

Fast forward a couple of years.  I was dating Tommy the Nice Friendly One during high school.  He was still friends with Silent Brandon, only now Brandon wasn't quite so skinny, and he didn't wear bolo ties anymore.  Now he had cool blond hair that "swooped" in the front.  (Oh, how I wish I had the technical capabilities to scan pictures onto my computer and put them on my blog.)  He still never said a word to me.  All I knew about him was that he never talked to me and he wouldn't sneak into the rated R movies with all of us when we went after church.  We were such good kids.  I'm pretty sure our parents thought we were watching Disney movies together after church on Sunday nights.

Fast forward a few months.  Tommy and I had broken up, but were making a valiant effort at "just being friends".  So, like any friend-who-still-had-a-crush-on-the-exboyfriend would do, I went to see Tommy perform in "Bye Bye Birdie" at his high school.  Tommy played some character that wore a tie.  

What I didn't realize, was that Brandon was playing Conrad Birdie.  Hey!  Isn't that Brandon, the guy who has never spoken two words to me?  The super-shy guy?  The guy dancing on stage in a leopard print bathrobe?!?!  The guy singing (and he can really sing!) Elvis songs complete with swingin' hips dance moves??  How is this the same person?  Where has this talented, confident guy been?  (An interesting side note, Friendly Tommy married the girl who played his love interest in the play, Rhonda, who had a few sassy-dancin' scenes of her own.)

I digress.

I think Brandon and I had our first actual conversation on the night of our high school graduation.  We were at Tommy's house, sitting and talking by the pool (this is code for "I was watching Brandon swim").  I had this killer red and white sweater on.  I was so cute.  I don't remember what we talked about, but I remember it being a good conversation.  My 18 year old self would never in a million years have guessed that I would marry the pink shirt/bolo tie/Elvis dancin' guy in Tommy's pool that night.