One Man’s Bad Date is Another Man’s Best: How I Met Your Father

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Two months after our first date
Two months after our first date

Whenever my husband I meet new people and tell them a little about ourselves, like how we are both the same age, we are both from the same suburb of Columbia, SC, and we both went to college in Charleston, people assume that we were high school or college sweethearts.  However, this is so not the case.  In fact, for the first 29 years of our lives, we were actually rivals.  We went to rival high schools; he played on his school’s football, basketball, and baseball teams, while I was a cheerleader for my school rooting for his team to lose. As freshmen at College of Charleston, my friends and I felt equal parts annoyance and pity for the gangs of knobs from The Citadel that would loiter around the first floor of our dorm.  Little did I know, my future husband was among them from time to time.

Although I knew of my husband was during these years as rivals (and he says he knew who I was as well, although I think he was a little too cool to notice the likes of me), we never officially met until our late twenties.  A good friend of mine knew my husband from high school, and every so often we would run into him around town.  I was introduced to him for the first time at Red Drum when I was 26 or 27.  A few years later we met again among mutual friends at Wild Wing, then a few weeks later we saw each other at Tsunami, and then our paths crossed again a few months later at Triangle.

It was at Triangle Char and Bar that my future husband (FH) and I found ourselves in conversation with a friend of mine telling us about a blind date she had scheduled for the next day. She and her mystery date were planning to meet at Vickery’s annual spring oyster roast the next day. My FH suggested that he and I attend the oyster roast as well to provide a safety net for my friend on her date.

The next day, my FH and I enjoyed sitting back and watching a first date in action, totally, or at least partially, unaware that we were on one ourselves.  We discussed my friend’s body language toward her new suitor, and we debated what the blind date was thinking when my friend told one of her famously cheesy one-liners.  We easily played off one another in conversation like old friends as we tried to make my friend’s date a good experience for her and her new man.

By the end of the oyster roast, it unfortunately seemed clear that there was not going to be a future for my friend and her blind date, but there did seem to be a future for my FH and me.  He asked me to dinner after the oyster roast, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Engaged April 2013
Engaged April 2013

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