That Boy

Hello peoples!

Today is a big blog day. I have two posts I want to get up today but I want to write this one first before I write the second one. Some people already know who I'm talking about but even some of my college friends don't know the full story. It's not the most common thing to bring up in conversations, at least not for me. That Boy is my boyfriend and we have been dating for almost two and a half years. Yes, I said years. We met in high school, but to do this story justice I want to start as far back as I can.

That Boy is four months younger than me but because of when birthdays fall, he is a whole grade below me (this will be very important in my second post). We were both in band, he was a saxophone and I was a flute. The first time he saw me would have been band camp his freshman year. When we were in playing arcs the flutes were in the front row, clarinets second, and saxophones third. He has told me he remembered seeing that really tall flute in the front row (I was 5' 9" then) and thinking she was kinda pretty but surely she must be a senior, and after a 1st grade heartbreak he had sworn off ever liking/dating an older girl. So very quickly he had decided I was out of his league.

I was a little slower at noticing him. I didn't normally mingle with the other sections, had my own freshmen to worry about, was a sophomore, and it was my first year marching piccolo (small flute, set in a higher range). So during band camp I wouldn't have really seen him. Then with freshmen band separate from the upperclassmen band I still wouldn't have seen him much.

The first time I saw him was when we went on the band trip to Disney World in Florida. But it wasn't the best first impression. He had a group of obnoxious freshmen boys that he hung with, which instantly made him another obnoxious freshmen boy. If that wasn't bad enough one of the days my older brother was hanging out with a group of us (my girls were freshmen which is why the obnoxious freshmen boys were with us), and at the time big bro and I weren't on the best of terms and he and some other people decided they wanted to split off because they didn't want to do the same rides I did. While looking back now I realize it wasn't big bros fault or even something to be that upset over, but it was very personal at the time and anyone who left was siding with him and abandoning me. Give you one guess on which group That Boy went with.
Big bro's.
The funny part was later in the day he and another obnoxious freshman were begging my group to let them join. One of the rules was that every group had to have at least three people in it, and the two of them had almost been caught by the directors and would have been in major trouble. Honestly though, I wasn't in the best of moods and wasn't feeling too nice. If it had been my choice I would have let them get caught, they had made their choice already. But luckily for them other people in my group were fine letting them join.

Note: I recognize I was not always the nicest person but part of what I'm sharing are my thoughts and not what I actually said to people. I did have somewhat of a filter back then and knew that sometimes you just don't say what is on your mind. I've grown up quite a bit since then and try very hard to not judge people so harshly or hold onto grudges like I used to.

So that's our first encounter with each other. Not the best. However, over the summer we both grew up a bit. When band camp rolled around we hung out a bit because our friend groups overlapped. He was still an annoying but slightly less so. During that fall semester we became kinda friends, but there still wasn't an attraction there on my end at least.

Then spring semester began. Our group of friends had a texting group that was active almost all day. One day That Boy sent a message in the group, that is when I believe my interest in him was first started. He said he hadn't been responding because he was with his church youth group serving an older gentleman by cleaning up his home. A few thoughts instantly hit my radar. First, he was a Christian most likely, something I hadn't considered about him. Secondly, he was actively serving, something that couldn't be said of a lot of the Christian guys I knew. None of this meant I fell in love then. I was at a point in my life where I was content to be single and didn't plan to ever date in high school. I was at the point where I had decided I wouldn't get obsessed with a crush even, and that my whole focus was to be on God. However it wasn't long after I had reached that point that God placed That Boy in my life.

So that text message was probably sent over Christmas break, and that next semester That Boy had a different schedule that changed him to my lunch shift. After some prompting from Bunny (my crazy clarinet friend), I invited That Boy to sit at lunch with Mouse (my quiet clarinet friend) and myself. Initially he said maybe but ended up sitting with some other band friends. Bunny was the only person I had confided in that I might like That Boy and she was very supportive. After a month he started sitting at my lunch table, at least a little bit. He would eat lunch with his friends and when he was done eating would come over and talk to me. Eventually he started sitting at my table through all of lunch. Few more weeks and instead of conversation ending, he would walk with me till we reached his class room, which was only a short while since I still had to walk down to the end of the building. By late March he was walking with me all the way to my class! Surely he must  have some interest. I talked with Bunny a lot about what I should do, I wasn't sure if I should even pursue this, she thought I should. She had talked with him some and was pretty sure he liked me, but I wasn't ready to put myself out there. Throughout the past few months I had seen his character and personality, and I really liked what I saw, he was a good guy (still is). There was a lot of prayer during those months and chats with mom on her thoughts.

The big moment came April 7th. My church was having a Knockout tournament, trying to set the Guinness World Record for most people playing in one game. We were encouraged to invite lots of people, so I invited some of my friends and That Boy. My thought was at least it would give me a different group setting to get to spend a little more time with him and get to know him. At the last minute everyone bailed on me, except That Boy. I was terrified! I now had no school friends to balance out the encounter, just my family who all knew I had been crushing the past few months! This seemed like worst case scenario. But it went pretty well despite a bit of family embarrassment.

That night I was texting Bunny and she was encouraging me to finally say something, even though I hated the idea of being the first one to say something. But I picked up the nerve and sent a message telling him that I kinda liked him. He was very slow to respond! He asked for confirmation of what I meant......then didn't really say anything...........by this point I was pretty convinced I had just ruined the good friendship we had built. Finally he responded that he kinda liked me too. Now what? We talked a bit about what this would mean, first thing being we needed to talk to our parents. Also we didn't want to post anything on social media to say we were "in a relationship" until we felt comfortable with it. And finally, we didn't want to tell anyone at school yet till we knew where this was going. We both recognized from the beginning that the purpose of dating is to find the person you want to marry, and that by dating we saw that as a possible option and if it ever wasn't we would need to end it there.

Well we let the parents know and that very weekend my dad had arranged a time to sit down with That Boy and have a little "chat" since dad had to approve any potential boyfriends. I was told nothing beforehand and to this day I'm still not sure of what all was said at that corner table at Panera. Whatever was said he passed the test.

Not gonna lie, meeting his parents was terrifying for me! I had what I would call a respectful fear of his parents, probably lasting for at least the first year, especially for his mother. He was her oldest, but still her baby boy and I did not want to get on her bad side. I'm not afraid of them anymore, I would say I actually have a really good relationship with his parents and his whole family, but I still have a lot of respect for them and always will.

We moved pretty slowly with our relationship. The first time we hugged was after two weeks of "dating" each other, and even after that it wasn't a common occurrence. It was a huge deal when after a month we held hands for the first time, and again it didn't happen very often. But something else that's pretty different about our relationship is that before I met him, I had decided that I wanted my first kiss to be on my wedding day. He was very respectful of me and also thought that this would be a good boundary for us and a good way to honor God in our relationship. So we have not kissed each other and don't plan to till that day. I won't say there hasn't been temptation, there most certainly has been, but through prayer and accountability we have kept the boundaries that we set in place. I know it will be worth it when the day comes.

Back to the story, since it was near the end of his sophomore year, my junior year, when we started dating. We went into it knowing that if we stayed together, in a little over a year I would be leaving for college and we would have to figure out how to make a long distance relationship work. Fast-forward, we were still together and I had decided upon a college that was 3 hour away form home. The year apart was very hard, but a good test of where our relationship stood. I came home roughly once a month, and while we spent as much time together as we could I still had other responsibilities when I was at home. One of my favorite things that we did was have video call "dates." Sometimes we just talked, other times we played battleship on personalized boards I had gotten us for our 1 year anniversary, and occasionally we would watch a show together. It wasn't the same as being together but it was a small way to feel close to one another.

Fast- forward some more and here we are. Currently we are now at the same college and figuring out the next challenge, how to be together after a year of being apart. We both are still working to learn the balance but I'm feeling pretty good about it so far. After all we have been through the past two years, I feel very optimistic about what this next year holds for us.

Alright I'm done being sappy. But before I end this post I want to quickly explain how he got his nickname. My mom and youngest sister came to watch one of the band practices the summer before my senior year started. Mom was trying to find me on the field when Punkadoodle (youngest sisters nickname for the blog) pointed across the field and said to my mom "It's That Boy!" Sure enough it was him. Since then my whole family has called him that and even his own parents have on occasion.

So that was the "quick" version of how That Boy and I met. It was very important that I write this first before I could write the other post I have for today. Hopefully I'll have the next one up soon, but if it takes me as long as this did, it may not be up till later this afternoon. Until then...

That's my view!