Keepsakes

Last night I was trying to get some laundry done before school started again for the week and naturally I ended up flipping through some of Dan's letters and cards that were rescued from the flood in our basement.

You know how it goes.  You go in the basement to get the laundry going, realize the kitty litter needs to be changed, go in the storage room to get the litter box liners, see the pile of letters and cards and there you have it.  Next thing I am back in the living room with the pile of said letters and we are reading through them as a family, naturally.  The kids weren't too interested, but I sure was.

Poor Dan.  He didn't get as much of a kick out of the letters and cards from girls as I did.  I understand though.  The one girl played him like a fiddle.  The other girls just really loved him, but didn't stand a chance.  I kind of feel bad for them.  The best part was that a lot of these letters were from early 1994 before he even knew who I was.  Little did he know I was about to come on the scene and change things for him FOREVER.  Muahahahahahaha ... hee hee.

I always like to tease him by pointing out things like I was just starting high school when he was starting college.  Would he have dated me then even though it was against the law?

It's okay though because I totally sought him out, not the other way around.  That might have been creepy because he is 4 years older.  The more I got to know him my freshman year I realized he is not the guy who looks at freshmen as potential dates and that was a good thing.  I loved getting to know him.  He was so smart, so grounded, so different than me, and we laughed together a lot.  Score!  I was so happy just to have him as a friend.  We were friends for a while before we dated.  That made the dating transition easy.  We were already super close so dating just meant we could start kissing.  Woo hoo!

And, it was legal at that point.

Sorry.  Back to the letters.  We were explaining to our kids that letters is how we communicated back then.  "Back then."  Seriously?  Are we at that stage in our lives?

Long distance phone calls cost money that most college students didn't have so we would write it all down in letters for the cost of a stamp.  It's amazing to think that our kids won't have these things to flip through, at least not in the amount that we have.

So, one of the letters from a girl said, "Dan, I understand (girl's name) told you that I liked you.  Those were childish feelings ..."  What?  Another was a belated birthday card that then ended with, "On a serious note, Dan ... " and basically went on to say how much his friendship meant, etc.  In other words "why aren't we dating?"  The bad part about that one is she was dating his friend.  What?  ha ha!

Keep in mind, this is me talking.  Dan might have a different commentary on all of this, but it is no different than when he sees my yearbooks, or letters, and tells me how this guy or that guy had crushes on me when I am swearing up and down that he didn't, that we were just friends.  So, now it's my turn. 

Who cares though really?  It's all in the past.  It's just funny though how at that time these were major deals.  It's also funny how FB has brought a lot of those people back in our lives to some degree, and I think some of the people would laugh with us over these things.

Oh memory lane ... you sure are fun to travel down sometimes.