The Night We Met...

You can find the first part of Our Love Story here.

I had spent the whole summer playing phone tag with a friend that I had made in my World Religions class that spring. His name was Jason, and he had moved here from New Mexico with his family. He was a couple years younger than me, but really didn’t know many people here. I had offered to have him hang out with me and my friends and finally, in August, we were able to find a time that both of us were available.

It seemed like from the beginning there was a higher hand involved in this evening. I started to plan what we would do. As I called all of my friends, they all ended up being out of town or had family obligations that would not allow them to come along and ‘play’ with us. I was disappointed that Jason would not be able to meet them, but we decided to go to a movie, and then to a place where a local swing (40’s swing) dance was being held.

After the movie, we headed to the swing dance only to find a sign on the door saying that it had been canceled! I couldn’t believe it! It seemed that nothing that I had planned was going right that evening. My last resort was to head over to the Country Singles Dance.

I had vowed to never go there ever again. I had been in the past, and was always stalked by this particular guy that really creeped me out. Yet, this was the only place for us to go…so we made our way there. Little did I know that going there that night would change my life forever.

We entered the cultural hall (church gym), and started mingling. I have grown up here all of my life so I always seemed to see someone that I knew. Sometime during the night, I left to go get a drink of water. As I was making my way back, I passed this guy. We made eye contact, I said “Hello”, and kept walking. The next thing I knew, someone was tapping me on my shoulder. It was the same guy I had just passed, and he was asking me to dance.

He was pretty funny. Tall, skinny, and kinda made me laugh with some of his dance moves. We made as much conversation as you can while trying to country swing to a fast song. After the song had ended, we chatted a little bit more. His name was Shawn. He also grew up here. He knew my cousin, and I actually knew some of the friends that he had come with. I told him about Jason, and how he was new in town, and needed to meet people.

Shawn jumped on that as soon as I opened my mouth. We made our way back to Jason, and before we knew it we were all hanging out together. Shawn introduced Jason to all of his friends. He spent the rest of the dance trying to make Jason feel welcome. After the dance was over, Shawn invited us to meet over at Wendy’s to get some frosty’s.

We headed to Wendy’s, downed our treats, and then somehow ended up at a girls house playing pool, and singing songs around a piano. Shawn had ended up asking Jason if he would like to come to his ward the next day. I couldn’t believe how bold he was, but Jason was glad to accept and wanted me to come along too.

I went home that night thinking that it was so nice that Jason was able to meet some great people. I thought Shawn was a very outgoing person, and was glad that he made Jason feel so welcome. I went to bed thinking that Shawn was going to make such a good friend.