Young Love In Y2K: How I Met Your Father

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BrandiHow I Met Your FatherWell, kids, every great love has a story and this is ours. The year was 1999. I was a sophomore in High School and I had just celebrated my sweet sixteen. I had a few boyfriends but I never really cared. Most of my friends were boy crazy but I was not. Something I’m going to have to learn a little more about because you, Ila, are absolutely, positively boy crazy!

There was one boy I’d heard a little bit about. He was a cute senior and had a cool car. I’d heard he had a crush on me through the typical high school grapevine. Seeing as how I was sixteen, I wasn’t looking for anything serious so I decided not to act on it. However, I totally flipped my hair every time our eyes would meet from across the hall at school.

It was days away from the end of the year and my friends and I realized that the worst possible thing in our lives had happened. We didn’t have plans for New Year’s Eve! This was devastating! It was 1999 about to be 2000! This was the biggest New Year of our lives and possibly the last with Y2K and all!

We had to act fast, exhaust all of our resources. I remembered the cute senior with the car and thought, “Why not?” I immediately got on AOL and instant messaged him. He said he was going to a party and that I was welcome to come. I told him I’d come as long as I could bring my friends. “No problem”, he said.

So, the night came and we all met up. Some of my friends, some of his friends which my friends inevitably had crushes on. We headed to the party which I eventually found out was his ex-girlfriend’s house. I didn’t think of it as that big of a deal because it wasn’t like I was dating him or anything. I wasn’t even sure if I liked him.

Well, as the night went on I decided that I maybe could like this guy. He’s cute, has a nice car, and my friends are in love with his friends, a very important factor in my boyfriend check list at the time. We decided to kiss at midnight. Word got back to his ex-girlfriend and at 11:45, my friends and I were kicked out of the party. We were escorted to our car by the guys we were supposed to kiss at midnight. That’s when it happened, your daddy and I had our first kiss. On December 31, 1999 at 11:45 pm. In the driveway of his ex-girlfriend’s house, surrounded by our friends also kissing because you know, Y2K.

There may be more to this story that involves underage drinking, your daddy getting slapped, and my friends and I returning to the party after midnight after we realized the world was not ending only to be kicked out a second time, but we’ll end it here. I’d also like to mention that his ex-girlfriend and I are friends (Hi, Heidi!) and there are no hard feelings.

I never in a million years thought I would marry that cute senior but apparently, he has a different story. He told his friends from the first moment that he was going to marry me. Marriage is hard no matter what but it is certainly not easy to grow up together. There are many great things about being married at 18 and 20 (yes, you read that right) and many things that take work.

Flash forward a decade and a half and here you two are and I’m telling you the story of how I kind of used your daddy for a way to get to a party and ended up falling in love and getting married.