Love Story Part 3: "First Date"

Everyone believes the story of how they got together is the best story, but fate truly intervened. As I've said before, I was totally attracted to Adam in every physical way possible but I was NOT interested. He had TONS of girls he was interested in and I wasn't one of them. In fact, at the time of this story, he was vigorously pursuing a girl named Katie who you'll remember from the last entry. I was the last person on his mind.

Because of these circumstances, you can imagine my surprise when on Saturday, May 14th My phone rang. I had just gotten out of the shower and was in my pajamas (at 6pm) all ready settled in for a night of movie watching and writing to my missionary. I was confused and surprised to see that it was Adam Turney calling me.

"Hello," I answered, confused.

"Hey, It's Adam. Some people are getting together tonight for a bonfire and get together, I was wondering if you wanted to come with me."

I did not. Those of you that know me, know that once my PJs are on for the night they are not coming off. I wasn't interested in a date, I was interested in sitting around pining for my missionary.

"I'll have to check with my roomates and see if we have anything going on, can I call you back in five."

"Ummm, sure. Ok."

I deliberated the whole five minutes. I didn't want to go. Would it be rude to say no? Of course it would. Would it make things awkward in our lab? Perhaps. I'd probably have to reciprocate with a follow up date anyway. Sigh. Fine. I'd go.

"Hey, Adam? Nothing is happening around here so I'd love to go."

"Great, I'll pick you up at 7:00."

I rushed rushed rushed to get ready in the 20 minutes I had before he arrived. I reapplied makeup, put on a cute but casual outfit, and because I didn't really have anytime for my my dripping hair, I just scrunched it curly and waited for the knock on my apartment door.

7:00 came. No Adam.

7:30 came. No Adam.

At 7:45 I finally got a phone call. I was pretty annoyed at this point.

"Hello?"

"Hi....This is Adam Turney."

"Yeah..."

"Who is this?"

Yeah. Remember how Adam dated a million people?

"Melissa. Melissa Marsden....your lab partner."

"Oh. OOOH. Ok. I'll be right there."

Adam had been on time to our date, he'd just shown up to get the wrong girl...At 7:00 Adam was over at Katie's apartment, which happened to also be the apartment of his good friend Erin from Visalia. It was not uncommon for Adam to show up and hang out at their apartment so when he showed up to pick up Katie, nobody thought anything of it. He was pretty annoyed when Katie walked into the living room, not ready for their date. He asked her why she wasn't ready. "Ready for what," she'd asked. "Our date..." At that point she told him that he'd never asked her on a date, that he'd never even called. She showed him her phone log to confirm. He got out his phone and noticed that instead of Katie, he'd called Melissa. Melissa who? He sat confused trying to figure out if he knew a Melissa and why she'd be in his phone. He checked to see if he'd called her recently. Nothing in the past 24 hours...finally, he called. He felt pretty dumb. He wondered how:

1) He called Melissa instead of Katie. M and K aren't even close together in the alphabet.
2) He didn't notice when Melissa called back to tell him that she would go with him.

Being a gentleman, and a guy who goes with the flow...he decided to pick me up.

Not being an idiot, I realized what had happened and I felt stupid, but I decided to go anyway.

Here is an account of our first date in the words of Adam back in 2005:

What an incredibly fun but shocking night. A friend invited me to go with them out to the sand dunes to hang out, eat some hot dogs, and to enjoy a huge bonfire (those are popular out here). I was more than happy to go since I didn't have any plans for the evening. I called up a friend to go out with us and then we met up with the group. Turns out we didn't go to the sand dunes but attempted to find a site at Beaver Dick Park (funny name, I know). Sadly there was nowhere to stay there because there were too many people there. But since we have some natives to the Rexburg area they knew a spot that would not be occupied and so we headed out to the middle of nowhere and had the bonfire in this huge crack in some rocks...it was cool.

We were in a brand new Ford F-150, brand new. It had rained a day before so there were muddy spots and we had a driver that wanted to have fun with his 4x4 truck and so we sped through the mud puddles. Splashing the mud was tons of fun and I could have done it all night, but since the other truck found the boyfriend first (I really don't care for the guy much) we headed back...this is when the real adventure occurred.

There were two people in the bed of the truck that were standing up, Hollie was one of those as she had the phone and was trying to get contact her fiance. They kept yelling for us to go faster since they weren't getting much excitement or something outside the truck. So the driver decides he is going to go all out into a puddle...not the best of ideas but not totally his fault. We lost complete control of the truck and ended up sliding off into the bushes off the trail and whipping the truck around. Finally we got back on the trail and the guy in the bed started pounding on the back window...we thought he was being stupid but I realized Hollie was missing. She had been thrown from the vehicle a good 150 feet back. The truck immediately stopped and three of the guys ran back to Hollie. I took pilot and drove the truck back to them so they had some light and we could pile her in the truck.

Fortunately she was safe and only suffered a sprained shoulder and is a bit sore and bruised from her fall. But it really shook up everyone, although I admit I was laughing because I thought it was pretty funny. So yeah, that was our exciting evening off-roading in the middle of nowhere.

So as you can see it was pretty eventful. What he didn't say was that we had a great time together. Talking together came as easily as breathing. Nothing happened, after all...we were both knew that I wasn't the girl he wanted to be with that night, and he wasn't the guy I wanted to be with.

Adam delivered me to my doorstep in time for the BYU-Idaho curfew...and then we spent the next two hours talking some more.