The man of my dreams

Sarah K. wrote a blog about how she met her husband and why her husband is so wonderful. All day I’ve been thinking about how I met Chad and now I want to write about it. I wrote a lot about Chad once we started dating, but I've never written the details of how we met. I'm not likely to forget the story, but it's a good idea to write it down. Chad and I have known each other for eleven and a half years and we’ve been married for five years, so this could be a very long story.

My senior year of high school I started working at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building as a custodian. Chad started working there a couple of months after me. Every night at the start of our shift all the custodians would meet in a room for a devotional and then if there were any new employees they would introduce themselves. When Chad stood up to introduce himself, wearing a West High Letterman’s jacket and a matching West High hat, I remember thinking, “this guy must think he is pretty cool.’ Chad’s first memory of me is me teaching him how to clean the toilets. (Isn’t that sweet?) His first impression of me was that I was beautiful, really tall, and completely out of his league. After we got married, he also told me that he remembers thinking that I had a cute butt. I guess that's mostly what he saw when I was bending over cleaning toilets.

Chad and I were assigned to work on the same custodial crew. Chad was kind of shy and quiet (some of his friends might say otherwise, but he was pretty shy around me.) I don’t remember much about the first year that we worked together, but I do remember that when he took four months off for the high school football season I kind of missed him and was glad when he came back to work. By that time, Chad was a senior in high school and I had already graduated (he’s younger than me, but not much, not that it matters anyway). My friend, Becca, who also worked at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building decided that she kind of liked Chad and so she asked him to a dance at her school. Chad, in turn, asked her to Junior Prom. (I remember being totally jealous. It wasn’t so much that I liked Chad because at the time I didn’t realize that I did. I was just jealous because in high school I went to a lot of girl’s choice dances, but I only went to one guy’s choice dance. At the end of that date, the guy said to me, ”I only took you because I felt bad for you, but I had a lot of fun anyway.” Ouch! Anyway, I wished that I was the one Chad asked to Junior Prom. Later I found out that he thought about asking me, but decided against it because he had heard me say more than once that I didn’t want to date guys shorter than me.) Chad and Becca ended up dating for about nine months. They were kind of a cute couple and I think dating Becca gave Chad a lot of confidence in himself. The only problem with their relationship was that Becca was dating another guy at the same time. I was aware of this and I didn’t agree with it, but I felt my loyalties were to Becca, so I didn’t tell Chad. I did, however, on many occasions let Becca know that I didn’t agree with what she was doing. Eventually, their relationship ended. (FYI- Becca is still friends with Chad and I.)

Right before their relationship ended I vividly remember a night when I realized that I liked Chad, but I kind of just pushed it in the back of my mind because he was dating Becca. Months after that, Chad finally got up the courage to ask me on a date. And I said ‘yes’, even though he is shorter than me. We ended up dating for about six months before he left on his mission and I totally fell in love with him. I did not ‘wait’ for him, but I obviously didn’t get married while he was gone. I’m sure glad that I didn’t.

To be continued…