For years I have written this blog, talking opinions, techniques, the standard topical retreat that tells you that I can represent my image nicely, but only on rare occasions have you ever gotten to know the socially awkward Blair that can’t send back a cold meal for fear of making the waiter’s day tougher.  Nerdy to the core and often shy around those I don’t know. My wife has to tell people the level of photography that I do, for I am completely content for people to think that I do high school portraits if it means one less follow-up questions.  Half the time I tweet the opinions I wish I held on social situations for I find them humorous, think of it as the Stephen Colbert alter ego personified in a less famous shell.

Of the many parts of who I am, the one I try to talk about the least is my wife. She knows me for who I am and at the end of the day I would give up this whole photography gig in a heartbeat if it ever effected my relationship with her. She keeps me in line and makes fun of me more than anyone else I know, and I love her for it.  So I figured I’d give you the reader a fun little story to laugh at, to enjoy, to go into this weekend thinking of and I hope it makes your day better. This is the story of how I met my wife.

Growing up in the church, I enjoyed the social aspects of it and the friends I made. There were many activities for the kids, the greatest of which being volleyball during the summers. My church’s volleyball team would play a game each week against another church. The problem was that my team was not too good, actually quite horrible. Fortunately for us all, one of our players knew the volleyball girls at his school, and through some coaxing we brought them on as ringers to give us a fighting chance the summer after high school. Erin was one of them.

Like every girl that I knew, she immediately thought I was annoying, and not to mention I had bleached my hair that summer…. not a good start for your’s truly. One day she and another player collided going after a ball, landing head first on the cement. In an attempt to be the hero of this non life threatening situation, I took off my shirt, put ice in it, and held it on her head…… AND SHE STILL THOUGHT I WAS ANNOYING!

In hindsight she was meeting the immature obnoxious representative of a guy that genuinely cared for her, but would never say anything of the sort because I was insanely shy around pretty girls. It is nothing short of a miracle that I convinced her to come visit me at college. However, one day (the weekend before I started college) she came over. We tried to hike up a small mountain on the ASU campus, only to to walk off the trail and wind up on the wrong side of the mountain, not by my scheming, but through my idiocy to not stay on the stated trail. We laughed it off, got dinner and walked the lake at ASU chatting about life. My ego left, my insecurity subsided and all that was left was me. Apparently what remained happened to be a bit more acceptable than the obnoxious kid that had stood in its place before, she said she’d come back next week for dinner.

We talked all week, and from mutual friends I learned that she had the same feelings for me that I had for her. One problem remained… I had no courage. I didn’t know how to “ask a girl out.” I wasn’t some suave jock that seemed to ooze confidence in the face of the opposite sex, quite simply I was terrified. But here I had a beautiful girl that had a bratty laugh, was a clumsy hiker, and I would regret every waking moment if I didn’t tell her how much she meant to me.

Friday night came around and I was a nervous wreck. To make things fun, we both decided to go to sushi since neither of us had ever had it before. Unfortunately for me the small table wasn’t all that steady and gave away that I was shaking nervously (what I would have given to be 21 so that I could have had a drink to take the edge off). I had thought about that night all week and what kind of cool lines I could say to ask her out, and yet there I sat speechless, all I could think about was her.  We left the restaurant and went for a walk. I was tormented by the idea that I would look back at this night in regret for the fact that I let fear of rejection deny me from living my life. At that moment I stopped walking, stopped thinking, stopped waiting. I didn’t know what to say, so I said what was on my mind…

 

I asked her if I could hold her hand