The 30 Day Meme: Day 02 – Your first love, in great detail
I have to admit, I debated over how to tackle this particular topic. It’s not that I’m embarrassed or ashamed of my first love — who, in case you don’t know or haven’t figured out, wasn’t Dan. But I feel weird discussing beyond passing mention my ex, because I don’t want to make Dan feel jealous or otherwise uncomfortable. But we’ve been together for over ten years and just celebrated our sixth wedding anniversary, so I think he’ll be okay with this entry. In any case, he can just skip right over it!
My first love was a British guy named Theo. We met when I was fifteen and he was twenty. He lived in London at the time, so obviously we met online. We first became acquainted with one another in an online British IRC chat, which a mutual friend of ours (another guy who was a few years older than me) encouraged me to check out the chatroom. I did, Theo introduced himself to me, we chatted it up right away, and before long we took our chatting private, to ICQ. It was around September 15th, 1999 that we became “official”. We chatted every day, emailed when we weren’t chatting, and talked on the phone several times a week.
On January 7th, 2000, Theo came down to meet me in person. At the time my mom was working in a medical laboratory, so she practically lived in women’s lab coats!, though she made an effort to dress up for the occasion. As far as Theo coming down, my mom was cool with it, though she wasn’t as happy when the original plan for him to stay in a nearby motel didn’t pan out because the motel was full (I later found out that despite its “motel” status, most of the tenants have been there for several years). It took him about a week total to reach me — first the plane ride from London, England to Canada (he had cousins who lived there), and then a tour bus from Canada to New York, and then another tour bus from New York to Pennsylvania. I still remember how insane my anxiety and excitement was that day. My friends knew, of course, and were almost as excited as I was — a bad combination, honestly, since we just fed off of one another. I could barely sit still, I didn’t touch my lunch, I fixed my hair a million times, and the clock wouldn’t move fast enough!
Meeting Theo in person was definitely a surreal experience. Is it weird that I still remember the color of his jacket, the logo on his hat and the scent of his cologne? The weekend was definitely fun, once we got over the initial shyness and awkwardness. No, we didn’t have sex, though the topic came up. But there was a lot of kissing, making out, and some stuff beyond that. What’s funny is that I remember what we did Friday evening — pot roast dinner, a movie, talking, some game playing (I think), etc., and I remember what we did Saturday afternoon and evening (lunch at McDonald’s, an evening at the mall), and I remember what we did Sunday (we drove down to Philadelphia to visit my grandparents, we had dinner there, and then took him to the airport that evening), but I don’t remember what we did on Saturday morning, besides… well… yeah. Ahem.
I broke up with Theo in early July of 2000. By then I was sixteen, I was working for a few months, and I was in a pre-college prep program. He, meanwhile, was content to work just a few hours here and there, live at him with his mother, and play computer games ALL. THE. TIME. His gaming caused friction in our relationship, due to him being so into them and not into me. He would seriously get PISSED at me for interrupting his games with a message on ICQ or a phone call. *sigh* It was that, and the general differences in where our lives were heading, that moved me to decide to break up with him. Yes, he was a great guy, very intelligent, sweet, respectful, exciting, etc., but there were two big obstacles that would ultimately make our relationship a failure. Ugh, the breakup. It was hard, I dreaded it, I cried, he cried, he accused, yelled, begged, got mad, etc., but I stuck to my guns. It was hard, but at the time I knew it was the right thing to do.
So there you have it, my first love!
