Ghost of boyfriends past part 3 and what if.....

Last one, I promise! Gotta at least finish what I started, so I can get off the memory lane trip :)

The next weekend after that Labor Day weekend of 1982, was my dad's annual work softball tournament weekend. He had been doing this for years and it was always kind of a fun weekend to go watch him play. It was just a casual, fun event. They were only teams for that weekend, not a league thing. Even though my dad was like 51 years old by then, he was very athletic and a good ball player and a good team leader type. He also kept active and was a super good racquet ball player. Anyhow, I remember my dad saying he had recruited this young guy, named T, from work, to play on his team this year (most of the guys were like 30's and 40's). He wanted to win, haha.  It was a big company, so lots of teams from each division or department, from all over the western side of the state. I remember meeting this young guy in between the games. I think he had come over where I was sitting with my dad to talk with my dad. Very tall and good looking and very outgoing and said hello to me. I also don't remember thinking much about him at all, really. He was like 21 and I was 18, LOL. I wasn't expecting someone like him to be interested in me, so I didn't even give him another thought, other than to think oh, he's really good looking, when I first saw him playing. Plus, I think I was still hoping Labor Day weekend boy would call!

Until the next Friday late afternoon and there is a knock on our door and I open it to find T is standing there! All 6'3" of his good looks...Holy Moly!  Ummmm...hi?! LOL. (Translation: what in the world are you doing standing here at my door?!) My dad apparently had invited him to go play 9 holes of golf with him and my mom, but they weren't home from work yet. So, I let him in to wait for them, of course. We chatted while we waited. Dang, this guy is so good looking and so easy to talk to (he was the type who was just comfortable in his own skin). Did I play golf? Nope. LOL. My parents got home and they left to go play golf (my parents belonged to a private golf club). A couple hours later they came back and I guess had invited him to have dinner with us. Well, this boring Friday night just got more interesting! He then stayed after dinner and he and I watched tv in our den and started getting to know each other. He was so easy to talk to. and did I mention good looking? It was probably just a fluke that I was at home that Friday night and not out with friends. I'm also pretty sure if any had called me while they were gone playing golf I would have decided to stay home, haha. He asked me out on a date for Sunday, to go to the state fair. We kissed for the first time before he left. We had lots of spark (more like full blown fireworks) between us, that's for sure. 

After our date on Sunday, (that ended up lasting all day Sunday to late evening) we were pretty much head over heels for each other. He turned 21 a couple weeks later. He had a good full time job and had his own place he rented and lived by himself. He didn't live very close, it was about a 35 minute drive, but I drove that drive a LOT. LOL. I even sold my Camaro and bought a car with good gas mileage, a Datsun B210, haha. His job also had him out driving around to the various offices of the company, so it was often he'd swing by my house many afternoons, basically his lunch break. I was going to community college full time in the mornings and working evenings and Saturday, still. If we weren't together we were talking on the phone every day, for hours. My parents weren't old fashioned at all (my step sis was living with her boyfriend), so most weekends I stayed at his place. My job was halfway in between my house and his, so that was convenient. I'd go up to his place Friday afternoon, stay the night, go to work my half day Saturday, and then usually go back to his place until Sunday.

We went on like this through the first of the next year. I was in heaven. The only "yellow" light in the relationship that I was ignoring was I never met any of his friends. Ever. I kind of just shrugged it off as he probably had migrated away from his high school friends by then, just as I was starting to do. He no longer lived in the city he went to school in, so I just figured it was that he didn't really have many close friends and none where he now lived/worked. Besides, he was spending all his free time with me. I did have him meet my friends a couple of times, but mostly he and I just spent our time together. He did introduce me to his parents (who knew my parents, as his dad also worked at the same company) and I went to a family gathering on New Years Day with him (we had spent New Years eve with my parents), so figured that was a good sign. He had told me he loved me and I was head over heels in love with him. Life was good. This was the guy for me.

Then sometime January or February he totally cooled things off. Said he wanted to slow it down, even though he had really been the one who went all out before. (hey, at least he didn't ghost me!). He still called me literally every single day. We never seemed to run out of anything to talk about, ever.  Probably at least once a week he'd stop by during the afternoons, while he was doing his work driving, but he didn't ask me to come to his house anymore and we didn't go out anywhere, other than like 2 more times. I was very heartbroken, but was holding on to what relationship we still had for dear life, I think.  My one best friend got married and I was a bridesmaid and he was my date. We did go out to a concert (Journey) that March. I had mentioned in one of our calls they were my one of my favorites and he said if he got tickets, would I like to go. But, we met at a park n ride to go to the concert. The next month my parents were in Hawaii at their condo for like 5 weeks. My step sister (she was 5 years older than me) and I decided to go spend a week with them. I do remember calling him one time from there. I mean, that was literally the longest we had gone without talking to each other in 9 months.

The next month or two was still more of the same. He just seemed happy with the way it was now. We weren't a couple really anymore, but he called daily (or I called him) and he still stopped by often. I had met a boy in one of my college classes who asked me out, so I said yes, trying to move on and get over T. I think we went to dinner and a movie and then came back to my house to watch tv. Oh, but I was still way too much in love with T to allow myself to go out with this nice boy again. I was still just too hung up on him, and I told this boy sorry. I was literally making myself sick. Basically I had turned into a girl for when it was convenient for him. I knew in my heart I couldn't keep going on this way. Finally, sometime that June, when he stopped by, I told him unless we were going to be an actual couple 100% I couldn't see him or talk to him anymore. It was just too hard for me. There were some tears, I think on both our parts, but he left, knowing he wasn't going to see me or talk to me anymore. I was crushed, hoping maybe the ultimatum would make him realize he was wrong. He said he couldn't imagine not talking to me every day, but I held my ground. I felt like I had just cut off my arm. My mom also worked for the same company and a couple of times he saw her (she worked in the company credit union) he asked her how I was doing (I was not doing good). She told me finally the 2nd time she told him if he wanted to know he'd have to call me himself. When she told me that I think I had hoped maybe he would call and tell me he made a mistake, but he didn't. I did see him one more time a couple months later, at the annual softball tournament. It must have been held earlier that year, then the previous Sept, as I don't think I had met my husband yet and we met at the end of August. At the softball tournament and we did talk for a few minutes in the parking lot. Or maybe I had just started dating dh, I'm not sure.

Oh, I almost forgot - sometime also that late spring early summer, trying to get over T, I went out with boyfriend #1 again. I know! what in the world was I thinking?! Third times a charm?! One of my friends had run into him at the mall she worked at. By now I'm 19 and he's 21. He asked her about me. Asked her if she thought I might be interested in talking to him. She passed the info on to me. I guess I must have called him then, because I don't know how he would have known to call me, since my friend didn't know to tell him it would be ok. We went out on one date. It just didn't feel right. He had matured, but he didn't make me laugh (and he had always made me laugh). I think I just thought oh no, I'm not going through this again with him and I didn't call him back. I think he had kind of left it up to me to contact him if I wanted to pursue it. Plus, I was still 100% hung up on T. I think at that point every guy was a comparison to T.

By July I was doing somewhat better. I knew I had to get over him. I think I went on a couple dates with a couple different guys. One was an old friend from high school I ran into at a party and he asked me out (again with the one date, no laughs, LOL). By then me and one of my best friends had rented an apartment together. Her parents had decided to move about an hour away and she had a job and was going to community college too, so she didn't want to move away with them. So we shared an apartment, so she could stay. I think we moved in first of July, maybe a little before that. I was busy with working part time, going to school, and enjoying the freedom of living on my own for the first time. (even though I was only a few miles from my parents, LOL). My bestie roommate still had the same boyfriend since sophomore year of high school, so most of her spare time was spent with him. (he was always kind of an arrogant prick, haha. Even though they dated like 5 or 6 years, she didn't end up with him).

One day in late August, the sister of my other best friend (the sister that boyfriend #2 dated for a couple weeks) called to invite me to a party she was having that night. Oh, I don't know. It's the same old people/guys, I don't think I'll come. It'll just be same 'ol same 'ol. Oh c'mon, just come for awhile. Ok, I decided to go. There were quite a few people there, and my best friend was there with her now husband . Well, her husband had invited a guy he worked with to this party. I heard this awesome laugh, so I looked to see who it was. Nobody I knew. I loved his laugh and he was chatting with my best friend and another of her friends (the lifelong family friend who also went out with my 2nd boyfriend LOL). I walked up to say hello to them. They were chatting about the soap opera All My Children, of all things. He was catching them up on what was happening in the show! I'm like I love that show! He worked a few blocks from his mom's house and would go to her house for lunch and she had it on the tv, so he'd watch it with her. He got us all caught up! haha. We talked off and on during the party, all of us a little drunk on beer, of course. He seemed to be gravitating towards me most of the night. He was pretty cute, with a cute grin. Long shoulder length very curly hair (all gone now! haha!) The next day was his (and my friends husband) company picnic and dh invited me to go with him, so I said sure. We all went together and had a fun day at a lake. I was comfortable because I was already with my best friend and her husband, who I had known for years and dh was easy to talk to. I found out later that friends husband had actually invited dh to this party to set him up with my friends long time family friend (the girl who had dated my 2nd boyfriend, briefly) and then if they hit it off for him to ask her to the picnic....but apparently he took one look at me and that was the end of that plan, haha!

And apparently we met a couple months before we really met, that he totally remembers and I do not. Well, I remember, but not at all that it was him. My best friends hubby had met dh through his work and started becoming friends. A small group were going to the drive in theater, in separate cars. My best friend asked me if I wanted to go along with them (I mean she and her husband were married now, they didn't need to make out at the drive in anymore LOL), so I said sure. I was totally a 3rd wheel that night, haha. When I got to their apartment to ride with them, there was another couple there I didn't know, also going along in their own car. I'm sure we got quickly introduced. We weren't at the apartment too long, and of course they were in their own car at the drive in so I paid zero attention to them. I didn't even know them. Well, apparently it was dh and his girlfriend at the time! He said he definitely remembered me from meeting at the apartment and remember seeing me sitting in my friends car, during the movie. I'm like well yes, I was there that night, but I don't remember it was you! haha.

Like I said I can't remember the timing of seeing my ex, T,  at that softball tournament, in the parking lot, for a few minutes. It was either just before I met dh or within a week or so, after. After that company picnic dh called mid week and asked me to go out the next weekend. We hit it off together really fast, along with the fact that I was actually finally ready to move on from T. I do remember, wondering what if T calls me again? I think I was wondering since we had just seen each other at that tournament and maybe he was having second thoughts. Even though we didn't talk too long, he had come across as like he felt bad for what happened. Over the next few weeks dh and I got closer and closer and I remember wondering what I would now do if T did want to see me again? I really liked dh a lot, but T...well he was T. Then I had a dream where I was standing on a river and T was on the other side and I didn't go over there, so I took it as a sign, haha. He never contacted me anyway and I only had one contact with him that next year. His mom passed away and I called him to tell him how sorry I was and also sent him a card. I think by then dh and I had gotten engaged, because I remember him telling me he heard I got engaged (probably from my step sister, who also worked at the same company, or maybe my mom).

While it wasn't that head over heels love with dh that I had with T, it was definitely a nice and comfortable love. I always felt like I knew exactly where I stood with dh and also, for the first time with a boyfriend, felt like I came first. It was just a solid feeling, not the high emotions I had felt with T. He had his own group of friends (he lived in a different town nearby) and added me right in with them, no problem, as well as with his family. DH and I only dated about 5 months and he asked me to marry him. He had to get a little drunk to get the courage....so I turned him down and told him to ask me when he wasn't drunk! Which of course he did, like the very next day or something, LOL. We had a year long engagement and got married almost exactly a year from getting engaged, just a week before my 21st birthday. Why we all thought back then we needed to get married so young, I don't know. Our friend couple, who basically introduced us (at her sisters party) were both in our wedding.  If I had to do it all over again, would I get married so soon, so young? Probably not.

A couple of good books (fiction) I read recently were about what if's on if different path's had been taken which in writing this out, makes me wonder about that, too. What if....what if I had tried to keep on going with T a little bit longer, what if that Labor Day weekend boy had called me back and we had dated even for a little while or even one more date...would it have changed everything else down the road? who I met, when, who I then dated? I'm sure it would have. If we had gone out that next weekend, it's highly unlikely I would have gone to the tournament, but it's also likely my dad still would have invited T to go play golf, so who knows (but it's also very likely T got himself invited to play golf, LOL)... What if I had stayed with my first decision to not go to that party, where I met dh? Would we have ever met then? It was only because friends sister gave that extra push to get me to come, that I did end up going. And only because I didn't already happen to have other plans that night.

I do know a little tiny bit about boyfriends #1 and T's life. I know quite a bit (now) about #2 because he married my best friend a few years ago :)  So, she married (2nd marriage) the guy who dated her best friend, her sister, and her other best friend, LOL. But all 3 guys got married and all 3 got divorced. Boyfriend #1 seems to have had the longest marriage, at 25 years and 3 kids. Facebook, haha. And red head kids, just like he was. Boyfriend #2 married someone who everyone said was bad news, it didn't last too long. He raised their son by himself. T didn't marry until he was 30 and divorced 9 years later. He married someone older than him. I think he has a son from that marriage.

While dh and I have sure had our hard times over the years, he still makes me laugh and I still like hearing his laugh. I do miss his 1980's rock n roll hair, though. LOL.