Alex posted these photos to Facebook after getting back to NMU. It’s proof that I socialize!
[Author’s Note from the future: this was before the days when everyone had a portable internet connection in their pocket so these photos are from days or maybe weeks prior. This is important for me because it shows the moment Val fell on me and we started a four year relationship. We literally FELL INTO a relationship.]
The comments are mostly Val saying things like, “GAH, my tummy! Don’t look!” While Sarah added a comment that, “[Will] caught himself a demon.”
There’s also some sexual references where Stevi said things like, “Can’t look away [from Val’s tummy]!” and I added how much “I love small, tight spaces.” Which everyone took (correctly) to mean that I liked a certain lady’s “small, tight space”. Everyone laughed at our crude attempt to walk-around the obvious innuendo.
As I remember it (18 years in the future), I had driven my ’88 S-10 (2-wheel drive and packed with stuff for the apartment in MQT) through the snow and ice of Northern Michigan from Hillsdale County. I was tired and not ready to socialize when I got there. The couch had been pulled away from the wall for some reason and I basically claimed it immediately as my nook. After giving me a few minutes, Val laid across the top of the sofa and basically said, “whatcha doing?” and then proceeded to roll onto me with us both letting out a cartoonish, “oof!”
We were both nerds starved for physical contact (“physical touch” was definitely part of our “Love Language”) and something about wrapping my arm around her and snuggling just felt right. After we broke up, I don’t think I ever found that feeling again until I wrapped my arms around my now-wife.
I was hung up on this incident for almost all of my relationship with her. I was constantly asking myself (and her sometimes), “why did you fall on me? What was the thought process that made that happen? Does she love me or are we just riding out a random happenstance?”
Thankfully, when I finally met my wife, she was ABUNDANTLY CLEAR that she was interested in me from the very first moment.