22 Years Ago

It scares me that I can write about anything that happened 22 years ago, but today marks 25 years that Barb and I started going out together. We'd been out on at least one, maybe two dates, but this was the night when it all became official.

We were at at a city wide youth meeting that night that was hosted at her church. She was leading worship, wearing a dark blue sweater that made her platinum blonde hair sparkle. All I remember is her looking out and smiling at me during worship. I was smitten before we started, but that certainly put me over the brink.

After the meeting was over, I had to get my youth group back to the church and then make sure everybody got home. After that I phoned Barb to see if she wanted to go out and get something to eat. While she was waiting for me to call she was doodling "Barb Schindel" on a scrap piece of paper that still exists somewhere in our crawl space.

Being the romantic guy that I am, I took her to a drive thru (Burger Flame) ordered two burgers, fries and a couple of drinks and proceeded to drive to a place where we could view the lights of the city. This is easier said than done in Moose Jaw, because it's in the prairies...

After some driving and subtle suggestions from Barb we found a place near a Senior's Care Facilty that had a great view and afforded us some privacy. (It was the place where her great grandma was and so we "visited grandma" a lot after that.... While we ate our burgers (complete with fresh onions) we talked about a lot of things, but nothing really important. As the night went on, we began to identify various landmarks in the city and pointed them out to each other. In a coy move that ranks among the best I have ever done, I managed to pick out something that she couldn't seem to find without following my finger to where I was pointing. When she looked back to ask if she'd found the right place she turned to look back at me and kissed me. We've been kissing ever since...