Celebrating the First of Many Decades to Come

Today, my Curly Top and I celebrated our tenth anniversary as a couple. It's amazing, surreal even.

We met during freshman year of high school, I was twelve. Back then, I regarded him as just one of my classmates. A tall, lanky guy with curly locks who always sat towards the back of the classroom with the rest of his buddies. I, on the other hand, was always seated near the front with the rest of the short girls and boys. He and his group of friends were the noisy ones, the troublemakers, the popular kids. I was a goody-two-shoes who preferred to be left alone with my Archie's Comics and Sweet Valley High pocketbooks. He played for the football team for Intramural Week every year. I tried my luck once with the softball team but promptly quit after a head-to-ball encounter. (Whoever named the sport soft ball was very mistaken!) 

He was frequently seen playing a guitar inside the classroom or on the corridor during free periods and in between classes. He's an all-around nice guy. He had many friends, many extra-curricular activities. I was minding my own business, trying to navigate my way through high school with as little bruises and burns as possible. One day during senior year, out of the blue, I realized that I liked this guy a lot. No reason at all. I don't even talk to him that much. But suddenly, he's just always on my mind. Weird. At sixteen, and it being just a few months away from high school graduation, I didn't have the slightest idea of what to do with those sudden "feelings" that I had. So, I did the most sensible thing to do: nothing.

We attended the same university for college. (There wasn't really a lot of choices as far as universities go in our little town.) We would say hello whenever we bumped into each other on campus. Those infrequent encounters, or even just spotting him from afar, made my college days worthwhile. I harbored a silly crush on him, but me being me, never in my wildest dreams expected to be in a serious relationship with him (or with anyone for that matter). My life back then revolved around school and home, and I knew my parents would probably kill me if they found out I had a boyfriend. But all of those factors didn't stop me from saying "I love you" back to him, when he finally told me how he felt for me ten years ago. 

To be honest, at the beginning, I didn't really have very high hopes for our relationship. I was always bracing myself for the inevitable end, for things to get screwed up, for an obstacle too difficult to surmount, for one of us to finally quit. But maybe we got lucky after all. Ten years down the road, we're still here. The object of my teenage puppy love turned out to be the one true love of my life. For this, I'll forever be thankful. 

So, to my dear Curly Top, God bless the not-so-broken road that led me straight to you!