Eight Years

There's nothing quite like a game of Electronic Dream Phone to start a lasting relationship.  Yep, eight years ago today, Joey and I were playing this board game with our friend Alexandra, in her basement when he asked, "Do you wanna go out with me?" And I said "sure."  Look where we ended up.

I'm sure most 16 year-old boys would not admit to playing Electronic Dream Phone, but it's where our love story began.  I think I knew that Joey had a crush on me.  From what I remember, our friend Ben, who was in the same biology class as Alex and me, asked me in class one day at the end of sophomore year, "so do you like Joe?"  Which is a totally obvious boy-way of saying "Joe likes you."  I'm sure Alex and I laughed about it and wrote at least 15 notes (we both still have boxes of notes we passed with our friend Jordan in junior high and high school.)  We invited Joey to hang out with "our group" of friends (3 girls and 2 guys...one year we were the Scooby Doo gang for Halloween...I was Scooby.)  And then, a couple weeks after school got out for summer, there we were: me, Alexandra, and Joey down in Alexandra's basement playing an exciting game of Electronic Dream Date.  Basically, you had to pick up a card with a picture of guy with a 90's haircut on it and call his "phone number" on the plastic "phone" and he would give you clues about who your crush was.  Things like "he's not at the mall" or "he doesn't like skateboarding" and then you had to see who was at the mall and use the process of elimination to find your guy.  Part way through the game, Alex got a telephone call and went upstairs to answer it (we didn't have cell phones) and Joey asked me out.  I said "sure" and Alex came back down and we resumed play.  After her dad dropped me off at my house I called Alexandra immediately to tell her what happened when she was on the phone.  And, the rest is history.

Four months ago, Alexandra, Ben, and Jordan were in our wedding.  In eight years, we have graduated high school, graduated from college, changed jobs, bought a house in the country, gotten married, and raised lambs and chickens.  And although many things have changed over the years, we're still pretty much the same.  We still love to make each other laugh and we still like watching stupid movies; only now we actually have driver's licenses and cell phones.  We were actually in Alexandra's basement last Saturday (her dad had some old John Deere tractor toys down there he promised to Joey.)  We were at her house to celebrate her graduation from graduate school and to wish her well at her new job and apartment in Pittsburgh.  It was sad to think about how we've all moved away from home and away from each other.  Even the basement has been re-arranged.  The couch where we used to have sleep-overs every weekend is now in her little brother's apartment.  We've all come a long way in eight years.