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Wednesday, October 12, 2011

The Beginning of 'Us' - How Theresa and I first met

Although our official anniversary is in June of '07, Theresa stumbled her way into my heart nearly 5 years ago.


Now when I say 'stumbled', I mean that in a very literal way. We had mutual friends that bumped into each other in downtown St. Pete one night. Theresa joined in with our group for a crazy evening of bar hopping. We walked to some local places and then stacked 7 lesbians into a taxi cab for our last bar venture of the evening. I've never seen a happier cab driver. Unfortunately, Theresa's memory of this evening is rather fuzzy. Mine, however, is not. I think it was 10 minutes after meeting her that she pulled out her phone to show me a picture of her adorable son, Keanu. He was barely 5 at the time. My initial response was "Wow, a five year old…bet that makes dating tough". I remember thinking, "Man, that's too bad. A beautiful 23 year old single lesbian with a 5 year old son. It doesn't get much more complicated than that." I still put my number in her phone after I looked at the picture though. You know, just in case she ever needed someone to talk to.

She didn't call me the next day…or the next week.

She later said that she was too embarrassed to call after having met me in such a drunken state of mind. We both agree now that as far as timing goes, everything played out perfectly. Had we started dating then, we probably wouldn't be where we are now. At that time, both Theresa and I were enjoying the freedom of the single life. We had both been through a rough previous relationship and dating anyone on a serious level was the last thing on either of our minds. After the wild bar hopping night I didn't really see Theresa too often. At the time, I was bartending at a couple of places in St. Pete, so we would bump into each other from time to time and exchange hugs and smiles. She didn't go out that often because she worked at a salon during the day and had Keanu in the evenings. A couple of weekends a month her parents would ask to keep Keanu and that's when she would come out for a bit. At this point, it had been about 5 months since the night I had first met Theresa. It was a Saturday night and she came out with her (at the time) roommate for a drink at the bar I was working at. When it got close to closing time she asked me if I wanted to get coffee after my shift. I pointed out that I wouldn't be getting out of work until nearly 3am, but that I was up for it if she was. So, she drove her roommate home, came back and picked me up from work, we hit the 24 hour McDonalds drive through, and made our way to an awesome little nearby park. We sat there for hours talking about anything and everything. When the sun came up we decided to head back to Mcdonalds for some breakfast and another round of coffee. The worker that had taken our coffee order in the middle of the night was still there. From behind the counter she yelled out "Girls, you need to go home and SLEEP! What are you doing back here?!?" I wasn't even tired.

From that day forward, Theresa and I spent nearly every single day together. I was figuring out ways to cut down on my work schedule just to spend more time with her. I discovered that I could work 2-3 bartending shifts a week (about 18hrs total) and make enough for bills, food and fun money. So that's what I did.



June 18th, 2007 - The official beginning of 'Us'.

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