Reinventing Mike Lake

by R. W. Jones

  “Is there anything I can help you with?”

  I spoke the words of all men caught off guard talking to a beautiful girl.

  “Ummmm.”

  Then I lied.

  “I need a book for my English class.”

  “I’d be happy to help you with that, which class?”

  Now I was in a corner, having already bought the book. I figured I can always return it the next day. For the second time in two days I bought a book for the same class.

  “101, Dr. Boff.”

  “Oh cool, I have that class too!”

  Jackpot!

  “Cool, I will see you there.”

  After taking me to the book, and handing it to me, she directed me to the cashier. That would be all I would be seeing her that day. I was bad at this.

  The next day I returned hoping to both see her and not see her, so I could return my book in a non-embarrassing manner.

  “Hey, it’s you again! Are you stalking me?” she joked, I hoped.

  Well, yes.

  “No, turns out I had this book already.”

  “Hmmm, well that’s unfortunate; let me help you with that,” she said with knowing eyes.

  She went up to the register, gave me a refund, and before handing me the receipt wrote something on it. Probably just a note telling her co-workers that I had returned the book in case I tried to return another one.

  This moment became a crucial part of our history, because I may have just gone back every day to see her without ever taking an initiative. Luckily, my future wife wasn’t a chicken like me.

  “Maybe I can see you outside of my work next time,” she said smiling and then walked back towards the sales floor. After staring at her as she walked away for a little too long, I looked down to the receipt to see her phone number, and a note:

  “I’ll see you in class, if you REALLY even have that class,” with a big smiley face. Then followed that with her phone number.

  Her smiley face drawing was nowhere near as big as the one on my face as I walked out the door and back across campus. My semester was made and I hadn’t even had my first class yet.

  18

  I didn’t call her because I would see her in class the next day. That, and because I was a chicken. I wondered if she thought this would be a slight and that I wasn’t interested, which couldn’t be farther from the truth. It wasn’t an easy decision, as I really wanted to call her about 10 minutes after she gave me her number. And I thought about it every 10 minutes for the remainder of the day. Still, by this point I had caught Drew up to speed about my bookstore crush, and he told me that if I called her too soon it would seem desperate. I believe guys have been telling each other that line since the beginning of time.

  I arrived to class early that first day, even before Dr. Boff. This caused me to panic again because I feared that my future wife would come in next and I wouldn’t know what to say to her. Luckily, she came in the middle of the pack, and took a seat on the opposite side of the room of me. It would be the last time we were ever that far apart, assuming we were in the same room together.

  I tested my peripheral vision with everything that first class. For a million dollars, I couldn’t have recalled one complete sentence that Professor Boff said that day. Instead I spent the whole time trying to stare at the bookstore beauty while at the same time hoping and wondering if she was looking at me. It felt like middle school.

  When the hour and a half class concluded, I was debating on making a mad dash for the door, or talking to her. She made the decision for me.

  While playfully punching me on the arm, and holding a smile on her face, she asked, “Why didn’t you call me last night?”

  “I, well, I didn’t know the protocol because you had just given me your number and...”

  “You’re going to give me that line; I bet one of your friends told you that, huh? Ask him how many girlfriends he has had.”

  I couldn’t remember Drew ever having a girlfriend. She was good.

  “Try again tonight. My last class is over at four, I’ll be expecting your call.”

  Once again I watched her walk away a little too long, and then I walked back to the dorm with a smile as wide as the campus.

  I called her that night. The next time Dr. Boff’s class met she took the seat behind me, and then the next class after that she took the seat next to me. We became inseparable from there on out.

  I can’t even remember the exact second we decided we would become “boyfriend and girlfriend.” Neither of us believed in labels, which was the cool thing in college, but I usually thought of it as the first time we kissed.

  It was a few weeks after we started seeing each other, and despite being early September, it was unseasonably cold. We were going to Billy’s because it was a Tuesday night, and that’s what you did as a freshman of New River University. Plus, they didn’t check ID, which was just fine for my buddy Drew.

  Everyone walked in New River. You partially walked because there was a decent chance you were drinking when you went out, but also because the farthest away anything was worth going to was still less than a mile.

  My future wife met Drew and I in our dorm room. Drew always took forever to get ready – combing his hair, changing his shirt six times, between pulls on his bottle of beer. Because Drew had already started pre-gaming, he had grown a bit unfocused.

  Finally we left, and within a few minutes we had one of our first “firsts.” We held hands. I wasn’t sure if it was a product of it being so cold, or if we had reached that point in our relationship, but I didn’t care either way. When we got to Billy’s there was a bit of a line, but after a wait of about five minutes we were one with the others in the swarm of bodies, and on our way to the bar for our I.D. free beers.

  At least that was our intent. Instead, after standing in a line that appeared to only get longer, I backed away from the line. I attempted to talk to my date, but because of the music being so loud everything resulted in a scream. I could tell she wasn’t having a good time. I was going to stay, not knowing for sure if she wanted to and being that I had came with Drew, but my mind was made up when she leaned into me and screamed.

  “YOU WANT TO GET OUT OF HERE? THIS IS RIDICULOUS!”

  I made a half-hearted attempt to find Drew to let him know we were leaving, but it was impossible in the sea of people. I also knew with their quarter beer special he would have stayed anyway.

  Without saying another word, I grabbed her hand and went back out into the chilly night. We briefly discussed the idea of going to another bar knowing that it would be nearly empty because Tuesday’s was Billy’s night, but I was glad when she didn’t show much of an interest. The prospect of walking around the quiet town and campus alone was too much to pass up, I remember thinking to myself. She later told me she was thinking the same thing.

  During the course of our walk I learned that her parents had become upset knowing that she was spending time with “some boy” despite only being a university student for a few weeks. I was taken aback by the comment, but during that same conversation learned that her older sister had quit college to chase “some boy” and after getting married at 19, she was divorced at 20, after a physically abusive relationship which saw her in the hospital twice. They didn’t want the same thing for their other daughter, and I could respect that. I promised to her that night that it was not my intention, nor would it ever be my intention to stop her from doing what she wanted to accomplish in her life, which was to be a veterinarian. She later told me that that line from me went a long way into knowing I was a good guy. While the line helped her, and in turn my chances with her, it took a bit longer to impress her parents.

  That was also the first time I ever told her about Abby. She had never had a serious boyfriend, being afraid to upset her parents after witnessing the hardships that her older sister went through, six years her senior.

  “College years are for trying and exploring new things. Didn’t your guidance counselor tel
l you that?” I joked.

  She unclasped my hand just to give me another punch on the arm, sliding her hand back into mine. I was already more comfortable with her than I ever had been with Abby, and I knew there would be none of this “on again off again” foolishness with her.

  As Tuesday turned to Wednesday, we were making our second trek around campus when we stopped at a playground right on the edge of campus that was built for the children in the surrounding neighborhoods, though nobody could ever remember seeing an actual child play on it.

  We sat down at the bottom of the slide, barely wide enough for us both to fit, with suited me perfectly. It was during this time I really looked at her, with the guidance of a street light giving her the perfect spotlight, though she always seemed to glow anyways. Her green eyes were always so full of emotion, and I learned to tell what kind of mood she was in just by looking in them for a few seconds. Her hair was up, but in a more stylish way she had it while working. I mentioned her freckles on her slim cheeks and she told me she hated them, but she used to have many more when she was a child. I loved them.

  We must have sat there for an hour, gradually getting colder, but gradually snuggling deeper and deeper into each other. I had been secretly hoping that this would be the night that we would kiss. I also learned later that she wanted to kiss me just the same, but after taking the initiative to give me her phone number, she had made the decision that the ball was now in my court.

  I was both enjoying our time together, but beginning to get upset with myself as I failed to kiss her. Finally, after what must have been another 20 minutes of battling back in forth in my mind on if I should or shouldn’t, I gathered all the strength I had, and kissed her while she was in the middle of a sentence telling me about her childhood dog. I didn’t make a habit of interrupting her during our relationship, but that was more than worth it. After a few seconds I leaned away, and gauged her reaction. Her eyes seemed surprised, but also told me she didn’t mind. She didn’t mind. The next kiss, which she called our first real kiss because she was involved in the entire process, saw her meet me half way. To me, that’s when we became girlfriend and boyfriend.

  19

  It turns out that she hated dorm living just as much as me. After our freshman year on campus we both found apartments with roommates though my place acted as little more than a storage unit, because I spent nearly every night at her nicer place. My parents knew that I was exclusively staying at her house fairly early on because I never felt the need to lie about those things to my parents. I could tell that they weren’t thrilled with that news but at the same time they understood that we really liked each other.

  Her parents were an entirely different story. After our sophomore year, we got our own place together. My wife to be never told her parents we lived together.

  Luckily, at least in this instance, her parents made only a couple of trips a year down to the college, but when they did it was always a humorous scene for our friends. When we got word her parents were coming to visit we immediately went into making her apartment look like it was occupied by her and her only. I gathered up all my clothes, video games, DVD’s and even my computer, and stored them at the house I had lived in, since I still knew the guys who lived there.

  Additionally, we had parties in our apartment from time to time, so I had to take all the beer and liquor out of the house as well. Her parents were very anti-drinking, attributing drinking to their older daughter’s thought process while she was in college. The guys at my old apartment didn’t care about my belongings being there, but as a penalty for taking up space they thought it only fair that they could drink all the alcohol I brought over. This was an unspoken agreement, as I had never agreed to it, but I understood. My choices were limited. I was just glad her parents didn’t come to visit more often.

  My wife had met my family at the end of our first year together, and everything went well, as I expected. It was there that I saw her in a family setting for the first time, and loved how natural it was for her to get along with my parents and my older sister. She looked like she was right at home. I literally remember seeing her in a different light both figuratively and literally as I watched her have an easy going conversation at our family dining room table, as the sun came in through our deck door. Seeing her get along with my family so easily made me like her even more. Because of this, and Abby becoming a figment of my imagination, I thought I knew what love was for the first time.

  Now here I was, getting ready to meet her parents just a few weeks after our sophomore year started. Through the course of that summer I didn’t get to see her because she was still afraid to tell her parents just how serious our relationship was. While I could sympathize with her being torn, I have to admit it made me upset too. It was clear that she spent a lot of time on the phone talking to me. In learning more about me, through her, she said it seemed her parents were beginning to warm up to the idea of me and maybe even realized I wasn’t as bad as they had thought.

  So, after cleaning out the apartment of any sign of me, her parents made their visit. I can remember putting on this big production just prior to them getting there, and lasting throughout their visit. I left our apartment and drove around for a bit until her parents got there. She then called me to “invite” me over, and a few minutes later I was entering my own apartment as a visitor.

  If entering as a visitor wasn’t awkward enough, I was met with a steely glance from her mother and a stiff handshake from her father. When I had left just a few minutes before, I remember the apartment being a cooler temperature. Upon reentering the house, I was now sweating like I had just finished a marathon in the Sahara.

  They were sitting on the couch with my wife to be in the middle, looking like the perfect sitcom family. I chose to sit in a rickety old chair we had purchased from Goodwill that I had never sat in before. To my wife’s credit she tried to start a conversation, and occasionally her dad jumped in with a question for me, about me, but her mom just sat with a forced smile and nodded her head occasionally. After about 30 minutes of that her father suggested heading out for dinner, which sounded like the greatest idea ever. The room was getting nothing but hotter.

  Dinner wasn’t much better. We went to a Shoney’s, one of the few chain restaurants near our school, which is combined with one of the few hotels near our school. While I was relieved to be getting out of the house, I realized on the short drive that this meal wasn’t going to be much better. I had only been this ridiculously nervous one time in my life, and that was before a high school homecoming dance with Abby. I had saved up every dollar for half a year wanting to impress my date with a fancy dinner. I remember hoping the ambiance of the restaurant impressed her, but I had no idea about the food personally. I didn’t eat a bite.

  The ambience at Shoney’s didn’t meet that of the restaurant with Abby, but I made sure I did my part by eating next to nothing. Between half-hearted attempts at three of the four of us starting conversation, I realized that her parents were most likely paying for the meal and I didn’t want to appear rude by not eating anything. I was drinking a ton of water because my sweats had followed me inside the restaurant, but I didn’t think drinking gallons of tap water would make up for the price of my sirloin and potatoes. I played with my food a little, attempting to take a bite of steak here or there, but with my throat as dry as it was I might as well have been trying to eat a bag of sand.

  The only time her mom spoke to me the entire course of the evening is when she asked me if I was going to get a doggy bag, letting me know without saying it that she wasn’t happy I wasn’t eating. I smiled forcefully, the theme of the evening, and told her, “But of course.”

  Gratefully, my wife, who was always blessed with a good sense of timing, told her parents that she had a test to study for so she should head back to her place and study before going to bed. She knew they would respond to her saying she had to study. She all but winked at me when telling her parents this. She was saving me from
losing another ten pounds of water weight, among other things.

  When we got back to her place, her parents made sure to wait around to make sure I was leaving before they left. I finally got the hint, and realized the sooner they left the sooner I could come back. I exchanged a sweaty palm handshake with her father and a nod to her mom, and basically ran out the door so I could run to my car and blast the air conditioning. Ten minutes later she called me to say her parents had mercifully left. After driving around the parking lot for another ten minutes just to make sure they weren’t sticking around to see if I was coming back, I finally parked. When I walked back into the house, my doggy bag in hand, the air was blissfully cooler and no longer thick. I took out my steak and started eating it on the spot as my wife watched me and laughed. I was starving.

  20

  By our senior year of college, my relationship with my wife’s parents was becoming better. After three years of awkward visits her parents realized at the very least I wasn’t going anywhere and at best realized their daughter was happy and doing well in school. In fact, she made the Dean’s List all but one semester after an algebra class her sophomore year caused a “C.” I’m sure her parents blamed this on our early relationship when their daughter broke the news of the C, but the fact was we were both bad at math.

  Another defining moment in our relationship came when we found out that she would have to be heading even farther south to North Carolina to go to graduate school because New River was cancelling its veterinary program. This school, Hickory College, was even smaller than New River, but offered a great vet program that included an entire farm on its campus. I never understood why horses were so instrumental in becoming a vet, because after completing her Master’s degree I don’t think she ever touched another horse again.