Girl Meets Boy

This week the women of GenFab™* are doing a blog hop on the topic: How I Met My Special Someone. 

Cliffhangers.

Some people love ‘em and some people hate ‘em.

Honestly, I don’t like ‘em.

So please know this: I don’t keep leaving cliffhangers for Jeff’s and My Love Story because I love leading you on.

But…

Chloe of the Mountain is a blog, not a novel.

The ideal blog post is somewhere around 500 words. Of course, The Jack B offers some dissension about this, but basically I think Sarah Perez was right; people don’t read anymore. They skim.

Notice my strange paragraph structure?

That’s because I know that you have only enough time to skim through paragraphs that are 1-3 sentences long. Any longer than that and I’ve lost you to cat videos.

I know how to write a proper paragraph.

I just don’t because there isn’t any point.

I’m embarrassed now when I go back and read some of my previous posts where I dabbled in convoluted sentence structure and long, complex paragraphs.

I should have saved us both a lot of time and trouble and just put up links to funny cat videos.

Or even better, videos of children’s art portraying cats flushing toilets:

53,000 people have clicked YouTube to watch pictures drawn by children of cats flushing toilets.

YOU TELL ME!!!  HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO COMPETE WITH CATS FLUSHING TOILETS?!?!

So–because deep-down, under this crusty kiss-my-ass exterior, beats the heart of a true-blue people-pleaser–I’m giving those of you who have been complaining about all the cliffhangers the cut-to-the-chase, elevator-speech version of Chloe and Jeff’s Love Story:

Girl meets Boy, Boy loses Girl, Boy and Girl get back together, get married, and live more-or-less happily ever after. The End.

Wow. 127 characters. Who says Twitter hasn’t helped my writing?

But see? Boring. Who cares? I don’t even care about that story, and it’s my freaking story.

That version doesn’t tell you anything. It doesn’t tell you that Our Love Story is a lot like the Princess Bride if only Prince Humperdink was a Psychopathic Meth Dealer and Buttercup was a beautiful hot mess running for her life, and Westley was….

Well, you’ll just have to keep reading to find out about Westley aka Jeff..

A few weeks back, at our party celebrating our 25th Anniversary–as we were about to cut the cake–Jeff was asked to tell the story of how we met.

Listen, you don’t just tell people every day that you met your wife in drug rehab. Sure, it’s a heart-warming story, but the back-story is dark and terrible. And since both Jeff and I still have all of our teeth, the story comes as a bit of a shock to anyone who asks out of the blue.

(I will admit though that occasionally Jeff and I do tell this story just so we can watch people slowly back away from us. Hey, it’s hard to find good entertainment in a small town. But, by and large, we’ve learned over the years that we don’t necessarily tell just anyone who asks us how we met.)

That’s why I have a blog. So I can tell you–complete and utter strangers–this stuff.

On the day Jeff and I met for the first time he wasn’t coming to see me.

Jeff dropped by to see my new roommate, Marlene.

Remember, days beforehand, I had finally broken up with Mr. Couldn’t Be Wronger, releasing his 99 Red (emotionally poisonous) Balloons into the atmosphere, thus freeing myself forever from his reign of terror.

So many amazing things were happening in my life.

I’d quit my dead-end job and applied to go back to college. I was sitting around the ole recovery home awaiting my first day back to school in just a few days.

When suddenly a knock came on my door.

I opened the door only to find standing there in my doorway a puppy-dog boy of a man beaming his 5-million watt smile at me.

After living in so much darkness for so long looking at Jeff was like looking into the sun. I didn’t much like it.

Jeff said, “Hi!”

I felt  immediate scorn.

Seeing I was going to present a challenge to his charms, he turned up his wattage.

I increased my disdain.

He asked for Marlene.

I told him she wasn’t home, thank-you-very-much, and promptly slammed the door right in his face.

Now if Jeff were writing this he would tell you that his first thought after meeting me was, “Cute, but what a BITCH!”

My last thought of him–if I had another thought at all–was, “Oh Gawd! No! Give me a break.”

Three days later I saw Jeff again.

Along with that ever-present, effervescent smile, he was wearing the tightest lace-up denim pants imaginable, and a cut-off Pink Floyd t-shirt (straight men could dress that way in the 80s).

He looked ridiculously sweet…and very, very young…and when he talked I knew instantly that I was completely not attracted to him in any way, shape or form.

After the AA meeting–where he stood up and shared his own sweet and poignant story–I politely went up to him to apologize for slamming the door in his face and to let him know that I was done with ALL men, and most certainly had no interest in him, thank-you-very-much.

And then I walked away.

If Jeff were writing this he would tell you that as I walked away he knew he’d never seen an ass so fine, and he knew he would not stop until he had me.

Jeff was used to getting his way with women.

But it was going to take more than that high wattage smile of his, and all his charms, to win me over and get a piece of ass as fine as mine.

*GenFab is a dynamic group of female midlife bloggers who are setting this world on fire. The women of GenFab are the voices of midlife today.