love story: an uneventful first year [part one]

during the crazy that is wedding week, i thought i'd share the story of how Ben and i met and fell in love. our love story, if you will.

these are scheduled posts because i'm not crazy enough to try to blog and get married at the same time.

don't you worry.

if you'd like to follow along with wedding week in real life time, as it happens, i'll be  the bride tweeting and instagram-ing away at @wildchild_jack.

happy reading!

the Sunday of freshman orientation weekend at a small private Christian college in upstate New York, called Roberts Wesleyan College, my roommate, Jill, and i decided to go to the student-led worship service on campus. Jill wanted to figure out how to get involved in the worship team, and to be honest, my main motivation was to check out the boys who loved Jesus. i had gotten there on Friday and been slowly settling into this new place that would be my home for the next 4 years, making girl friends and scoping out boys. 

we sat down in seats near the front, i'm pretty sure, not that it really matters. there was singing and a little message i think, but then we split up into groups to talk a little bit and meet new people. this is the part that matters. Jill and i spun our chairs around and happened to be in a group with this kid from Michigan who played the trumpet, named Robbie, and another kid from the Southern Tier of NY who ran on the cross country team, named Ben. we all chatted a little bit, but it was nothing special. i walked home from the night not really remembering anyone's name, still hoping to meet my knight in shining armor [or at least a nice Christian boy who wasn't a weirdo] somewhere around the corner.

a few days later, on the second day of classes, i walked in to First Year Seminar and Ben was sitting there. i knew i recognized him, but i'm awful with names, so i just kind of awkwardly waved hi and went to sit by him. this memory isn't crystal clear for me, because, remember that i wasn't blown away by Ben the first time i met him, nor was he by me. regardless, we continued to always sit relatively close to each other in class, as we quickly realized that we were two of the few sane people in a class full of Roberts crazies. things move quickly at that school, so within a few weeks, he somehow ended up in my group of friends. we weren't close, but we weren't distant either. we had inside jokes, but i still thought of him as "that weird runner boy who is way too into movies" and he thought of me as "that snobby popular girl who loves to read but thinks she's cooler than she should" [what can i say, being an independent college woman apparently got to my head]. 

Ben actually fell for my roommate, Jill, and i fell for our First Year Seminar student mentor, Danny. fall semester was spent hanging out in our giant group of friends, going on trips to Jill's house in Canada, staying up way too late in the library, and getting dressed up for Winter Formal. Ben tried repeatedly to woo Jill into being his girlfriend, and i had successfully wooed Danny into being my boyfriend. we were both happy, but definitely separate. spring semester was more of the same, except after another unsuccessful wooing attempt in Canada on Valentine's Day, Ben gave up on Jill and moved to my other best friend, Molly. i was on and off with Danny. late nights in the library, late nights having fun, Spring Formal, more of the same.

then one afternoon, the day after Spring Formal, right before finals week began, Danny and i got into another fight and he broke up with me. let the records show that this was the first boy to ever dump me! i had had 11 boyfriends before Danny and had been the dumper every single time, so this new feeling of rejection was not my favorite, understandably. i spent the week pissed off and lonely, as i was excited to spend my summer with my boyfriend. 

that Thursday night, i was all done with my tests. i didn't feel like moving out and going home yet [though i technically should have] and all of my friends had a test the next morning and were studying. i had no one to hang out with, so i texted people and Skyped people and all around bugged every single person i could think of until i convinced Ben came over to hang out with me in the lounge. he said he had a test to study for, and couldn't stay long, but i guess i guilted him into staying and we ended up pulling an all-nighter, talking and joking around, going for walks and trying to study a little bit. at one point, i fell asleep on his shoulder, and he thought i was trying to seduce him with the "my boyfriend just broke up with me; i'm lonely and vulnerable" move, but realistically, it was 3 am and i needed someplace comfy to rest my little head. apparently his bony shoulder was just the place that that happened. a little bit later, we went out to see the sunrise, he went back to his room to study for a few hours before the test, and i crashed in my bed. unchanged, unscathed.

we ended our freshman year of college as good friends, but nothing else. i was recently dumped and he and Molly were just not working out either. we were single and ready to mingle, but neither one of us thought of the other in that way. after all, he was the weird movie kid and i was the snobby reading girl.

i didn't have a camera my freshman year, but here are some gems i found on Facebook:

Ben and Jill are the middle left couple and Danny and I are the middle right.

Jill, Ben and i in the backseat on our "Singles Awareness" trip to Canada.

Molly, Ben and i at Spring Formal.