The Story of Us: we meet

Whenever we spend evenings with new couple friends, I always ask to hear their stories.

Have you ever asked a couple to tell their love story? They interject with silly details, laugh about the early embarrassing moments, and smile with gleaming eyes in remembrance of the romance.

To me, it's the sweetest story every time.

Inspired by Beka, I thought I'd share our story. It's not as exciting or dramatic as some, but it's ours.

(E is a much better storyteller than I, so I may at times interject his side of things from the story he wrote on our wedding website.)

A fact you may not know about me, for background: I was home schooled through high school, and started college a little earlier than most. I finished two years at a community college before transferring to the school where I met E.

Fall of 2006

I had started at a new school, my parents' alma mater, about 45 minutes from their house. With private school tuition making me a big-time debtor, I thought I would be a thrifty student and commute to school. It became clear within a few weeks that commuting was not going to give me the college experience I wanted. I found it hard to meet people on campus, and I had no place for down time in between classes other than the library.

So because of that, and because I felt ready for a measure of freedom from living at home, I asked the dean of students to find a place for me in the campus dorms.

(E's perspective) A few of my girl-friends had been informed that a new roommate was moving into the residence hall three weeks into semester. The one thing we all knew: she was home-schooled.

The first question I asked about her was, “Is she cute?” because most of us consider a “cute homeschooler” to be an oxymoron. But after meeting Katie, I knew that I had stumbled across one of the greatest paradoxes of my life’s experience: an attractive homeschooler.

Someday I'll talk about all the home schooling stereotypes I've been subjected to--but as you can see--E was pretty skeptical of me before we met.

Which was no loss to me. At the time I was a dating a police officer4 years my senior that I'd met in a local music scene (he was a drummer). It was a fairly serious relationship and I found it difficult to balance college campus life with a more established boyfriend who had moved into his own place.

As a result, I missed out on a lot of the typical college experiences, and didn't spend as much time on campus as I'd planned.

But one of my roommates was particularly close to E and his best friend Alex, and often invited me to hang out with them or eat together in the cafeteria.

We saw each other only occasionally and E always seemed particularly friendly, if not flirty.

I soaked up the attention as a carefree co-ed, but found myself finding more excuses to hang out with my new group of friends.

(E's hilarious perspective): It wasn’t long before I was displaying my charm and wit, only to discover that Katie was “seeing” someone else. Player that I am, I realized that the only way to win this lady’s heart was to play a little game of hard-to-get. So, I packed my bags and flew to England in order to show Katie the E-shaped vacuum which would be left by my absence.

At Christmas break we all parted ways. Cait heading to a semester in Spain, and E and Alex heading to spend a semester in Oxford.

I wasn't sure that any of us would go back to being friends like we had that semester, and I settled in for a very depressing spring...