Adventures in ParaDyess: The Dating Years
I decided to do a little blog series of mine and Ryan’s relationship. I hope it allows my couples to get to know me/us a little better and serves to be at least a little entertaining. So let’s start at the beginning…
It was August of 2011. I was preparing to go to college and Ryan was on his way back from a family vacation. I was ay my uncle’s house preparing for my going away party (really just an excuse to have a giant slip-n-slide party). I came inside to show a friend my new computer—complete with fancy Jack Bauer-esque finger print scanner—when Ryan messaged me on Facebook. We chatted for a few minutes and, since I was going to go back outside to join the festivities, we exchanged phone numbers…and we never looked back.
We decided to go on our first date a few weeks later. After my parents shot down the idea of me going to Abel lake to jump off of rocks with a boy I had just started talking to on Facebook (lol), we decided to go to the Prince William County Fair. He picked me up from my house, met everyone (including my aunt who had stopped by on her way home from work and was being nosy) and we were on our way. In the Big Bad 250. Ryan’s truck at the time was a 1999 F250 Powerstroke on 38” tires…yes it was cool…yes he sold it when he had to start paying for fuel lol.
We wandered around the fair for a bit, looked at the animals, watched people, and then went to the grandstands to watch the main event. We were sitting there watching and Ryan held out his hand for me to hold. It took a second to register…I looked at it, looked at him, and then I was like oh, duh, he wants me to hold it. We pretty much haven’t stopped holding hands since.
During the main event, it started raining, we went under the stands with everyone else trying to wait out the rain…well it didn’t stop. And we were soaked. So we decided to go down the road to red robin for dinner. If you’ve ever been to red robin, you know how big the menu is. And i get the same thing pretty much every time we go so I knew what I wanted. Sooo when the waitress came and asked if we were ready, I said yes. Turns out Ryan wasn’t ready. He picked something at random on the menu and it turned out to be a portabello burger…not a beef patty with mushrooms on it…a giant mushroom. The funniest part is, I had no idea. I was like are you not hungry?? he as like no not really and we left after I finished my entire burger and probably at least two rounds of their bottomless steak fries (lol). On the drive home all I could think about was that I hoped he would kiss me. And he did. And it was the best first kiss I could have asked for—no, I had never kissed anyone in my 17 years of life. Ryan was my first and my only.
We had some hard conversations in the next few weeks. I had always heard you should never go to college with a boyfriend. And I told him that. And it almost turned him away, but thankfully he persisted. A few weeks later, we were standing in line for Carl’s ice cream and he asked me to be his girlfriend. Of course I said yes and here we are almost 10 years later.
When we started dating, I was a freshman in college and Ry was a junior in high school. So a lot of the time we spent together consisted of me doing homework and him watching tv or scrolling on craigslist (one of ry’s favorite past times). I was also a collegiate athlete, I played softball at UMW. So you can imagine that took up a lot of my time. Because valentine’s day falls at the very beginning of the season, it has always been a super low-key holiday for us. He’d always bring me chick-fil-a, flowers, and chocolate when he picked me up from practice. That’s been our tradition for years now and it’s one of my favorites.
He came to most of my games even though he always says softball is boring. If there was a lacrosse game going on at the same time as one of our games, you could guarantee he would be up standing by the lacrosse field fence and looking over his shoulder waiting to see when I was up to bat. Even still he remembers many of the chants other teams would do and randomly will say “good eye, babe” if it applies in real life.
Summer was always our favorite though. I would have tournaments some weekends for travel ball and he would come to those even though it was hot as heck out there. But whenever we could, we spent time at the lake. we went on family vacations with each others’ families. Mississippi, Florida, North Carolina, Dominican Republic, a cruise, Cancun. We even road tripped the eastern united states. We went to illinois so I could meet his great grandma and other family there and then drove all the way down to mississippi on that same road trip for his cousin’s wedding. We went on camping trips, had lots of bonfires, and most importantly, spent a lot of time together and learned a lot about each other.
I was there with him when he graduated high school and started community college, he stood next to me as I graduated with my bachelor’s and went on to start my master’s. We went through a lot in those 4 years…and it wasn’t easy. Especially with my softball schedule (practice, home games, away games, workouts, team functions, etc. etc.) plus having an internship part time junior and senior year. And him being in college and running a business. We had to be very intentional about our time together and we had to multi-task and both of us had to be okay with it.
In the end, I’m glad I went into college with a boyfriend. And I was in the middle of my masters program when we decided to take the next step in our relationship