A Trip Down Memory Lane

 I want to tell you a little story....

This November (I'm not sure of the date off the top of my head, but if I looked at a calender from 2001, I could definitely tell you) it will be 12 years since I met the love of my life. My Andy Pandy (I have never called him that, ever.) It was a Saturday night (the Saturday before Thanksgiving), fairly late, and the roads were all but empty in downtown Salt Lake City. I was with one of my best friends (my cousin Hailey) and we were cruising around in my new car. We had eaten dinner earlier, wandered around a bit, and to top off the night had decided to get tiny tattoos on our lower backs (I was a little bit crazy back then but don't worry, I'm better now :)

After our fun and eventful evening, we were driving down State Street to hop on the freeway and head home. I pulled up to a stop light and a few seconds later, a little white Nissan Sentra pulled up next to me. I glanced over and it happened to be a car full of guys. We were the only two cars in sight. I turned away from the window and continued chatting with Hailey. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a motion, so I turned and looked again. They guy in the back seat was pointing at something. There was a little "For Sale" sign on the Sentra's window with a phone number underneath it. He pointed to the number and put his hand up to his ear in the imitation of a phone and mouthed, "Call us!" while flashing a big grin. I rolled my eyes, shook my head, and mouthed back to him, "no". Then the light turned green and I took off (in my speedy fast new Acura Integra. Oh yes, I thought I was some hot stuff.)

Much to my dismay, the next light was red, and a minute later, the little white Sentra pulled up next to us again! I glanced over, and couldn't help but giggle at the antics of all these cute guys in the car trying to get us to pullover. Now, remember people, I was just out of high school and as dumb as they come. I never thought anything bad would ever happen to me. Thankfully this group of guys were some good guys (so who knows why they were trying to pick up some random girls on State Street, but anyway...) but I sure didn't know that at the time. Without another thought, I pulled over at the next side street (with some cajoling from Hailey) and we got out of the car (in a totally deserted back alley parking lot! Oh my, I was so stupid...) and three big, good looking guys got out of the little white Sentra and swaggered on over to chat with us. Introductions were made. Andy totally lied and told me he was 17 years old and went to Taylorsville high school (his reasoning, he later told me, was because he was trying to help his two friends out and hook us up with them, so he lied about his age so that we wouldn't be interested in him.... um, okay. Cocky much?!)

We sat and chatted for a little while, but it was November as I previously mentioned. It was chilly, so we decided to head to a restaurant that would be open late and hang out for a little while. Somehow someone suggested The Belgian Waffle, so I hopped in my car and Andy immediately hopped in the front seat next to me (he claimed later that he did this to get an idea of what we thought of the other two guys, you know, so he could talk them up and make us think they were great.... or something...). Hailey got in the back. And the other two guys (Tony and Blair) got back into their car and followed us to the restaurant. On the way, Andy asked us what we thought of Blair and Tony. We told him we weren't interested, but that they all seemed like fun guys to hang out with. I noticed right away that Andy was really funny and so easy to talk to. I felt really comfortable around him right away. I'm sure the thought crossed my mind that, "It's too bad he's only 17...."

So we get to the restaurant and Andy manages to put himself between me and Hailey. Blair was on my other side, and Tony was on Hailey's other side (we were seated in a giant corner booth.) Right away Blair starts flirting with me and asking for my number, etc. etc. He was a nice guy, but totally not my type. We all ordered some food and the conversation flowed easily. They were all really fun and easy to talk to, and we also made some connections between some people we all knew. We stayed for a couple hours, and halfway into it, Andy kind of turned his attention my way and started totally flirting with me. I flirted back because at that time I was like, the biggest flirt ever, and he was fun. I think it was around this time that I found out Andy was really 21, and he had just gotten off his mission to Spain about 2 months before. I gave him a really hard time about lying to me and I remember him squeezing my leg all the while giving me one of his signature guilty grins. We ended up heading over to Andy's parent's house to watch a movie. We did turn a movie on, but instead of watching it we all just kept talking. Finally around 4 in the morning, I decided we better take off. Andy asked me for my number (it was the third time that night I had given my number out, by the way...) as well as Hailey's and I didn't think much of it because he was just a really fun guy and I knew it would be fun to hang out with him again.

Little did I know what was really in store for us.... someday I'll finish the rest of the story about how we fell in love and got engaged (which was just a short two months later... crazy kids.)

The real reason I'm telling all this is because about every 5 years we get a hankering to head back to The Belgian Waffle and reminisce. This is literally the third time I have been there in nearly 12 years. We had such a fun night, ate some yummy waffles that were probably really bad for us, and topped it off with a dollar movie (we finally saw Star Trek and loved it!)

Thanks for the fun memories Babe, old and new. I sure do love your face.