As you’ve probably gathered by now, Nick and I met at a demolition derby in Sturgeon, MO. I kicked his ass with my Ford Aspire. Don’t ask Nick about it because he has yet to live it down.
No. Ok. I’m exaggerating for dramatic effect.
Nick wanted to shoot a demolition derby. But he didn’t want to pay for film. The j-school had a magazine that was interested in the pitch. All they needed was a writer. Serendipitously, I’d called them a day prior to casually throw my name in the hat for any quirky feature stories.
There wasn’t an immediate burst of butterflies and sparkly rainbows when we first met. Today, he says he couldn’t look me in the eye because he thought I was pretty. To me, he seemed a little distant. Albeit hot. I couldn’t believe that on a small-ish campus in a small-ish town, with so many of the same pre-requisite journalism classes and so few decent bars to choose from, I’d never seen Nick before.
Before we parted ways at the derby his last words to me were: “Just don’t walk into my frame.” He’s since checked the negatives from that night, hoping I’d slipped up and pranced into a photo or two. No such luck, even though we interviewed some of the same people. After I talked to some teenagers about their effed up car, Nick sidled over to see if they’d make for a good picture. “She’s cute,” they said to him (meaning me). “But her tits are way too small.” Nick says he remembers defending my honor that night, but I’m not sure how that played out.
On the ride back from Sturgeon to Columbia we were both wound up. The derby was fantastic, particularly because the guy Nick based his pitch on ended up winning. It was one of those balmy nights that I miss so much about Missouri. Crickets chirping in the fields, loads of stars in the sky. He told me a story about a girl who’d gotten her hair caught in the small fan he’d rigged up to cool the back of his car (no A/C in the Corvair). I actually got a little jealous. Another girl. In this car. Got her hair caught in his fan. Hm.
There’s one strong indication that I was more than just casually interested: I haven’t been able to consume an entire glass of beer since an unfortunate incident of overindulgence in eleventh grade. But when he suggested after the derby that we get pizza and a pitcher, I was on board so fast you’d think I take a beer with breakfast every day. I valiantly shared that pitcher with him. Not sure how I managed.
When Nick dropped me off, he seemed a little nervous. I think that’s the only way to explain our first good-bye sequence:
Me: “I had a great time tonight. Thanks!”
Pause…followed by…silence…
Then, just as I close the door he says:
“Yeah, well, I had nothing better to do.”
The way he said it made me smile. I could tell from the tone in his voice that it was one of those things people blurt out when their brain goes blank under duress. Kind of like the time I admitted to being lazy during a job interview. Which is far from the truth. And not at all what I meant. And not even really remotely related to anything we were talking about. Nick wasn’t a jerk. He just really liked me! I decided that I wanted to see him again. When I asked him out on our first date a few days later, he said yes (natch). Within a few years, we graduated from "I like you" to "I really, really like you" to "I love you" to "I'm in love with you." And now we're finally getting to the "I do."
