THE DATING DANCE | THE AWKWARD BEGINNING | Strouse House Chronicles: PART 6 A
(Here we are at my college graduation, looking super awkward because the dating dance had just begun.)
Awkward. Like “The Office” Awkward. That is the best way to describe the transition from the the four year friendzone to the dating dance.
It was not immediate nor smooth. It was awkward. It was painful and extremely rewarding.
Think about it. You have this friend. Your best friend. That you’ve done everything with. Y’all hang out every day, have class together, party together, go to football games together and work together. You are comfortable. Then one day, God up and decides to throw you each a curveball and change your thinking of “oh yea, this is my bestie” to "hmm, maybe we could date." Your best friend turns into your crush, you blush at everything they do, you find yourself thinking about them more than you should and getting nervous every time they are on the way to pick you up. That transition is awkward and yet necessary.
In 2007-2008, we were were both preparing to graduate and dealing with the uncertainty of starting a career and striking out into the unknown of the post-college world. On top of our lives each being in an extreme transition mode, we also started to deal with these awkward, newfound feelings we had for each other. Our fall of 2007 was full of football games, class projects, and long runs around campus that were no longer carefree, best friend hang outs. They were semi-dates where neither one of us knew how to act because we hadn’t expressed how we felt for each other yet.
THE UNOFFICIAL FIRST DATE
Valentines Day of 2008 arrived and both of us were single and awkwardly crushing on one another. We ended up scoring a pair of tickets to this ALL-YOU-CAN-EAT chocolate party (SEE A THEME? WE LIKE TO EAT.) in downtown Opelika. We trotted around from table to table trying all kinds of chocolate and sipping delicious red wine not realizing we were on our unofficial first date. First was dessert, then we headed to dinner where we each told ourselves “this is just dinner with my best friend...there’s nothing to see here.” We ran into some friends who suspiciously gazed our way suspecting it was a date and also knowing we were completely oblivious to that fact. That ended up being the first of now seven Valentine’s Days we have spent together.
Fast forward to May 2008.
(Here we are at my college graduation with my roommates, Jordan and Amanda. This was about a week before our long run...read more about that below.)
One of the things we enjoyed doing was running together. On one particular run, we ran and ran and ran some more until we were in a park after dark, a long way from campus. This run was filled with deep conversations about life, school, and eventually us. We slowly started to share what we saw for our lives and hinted at how we felt for each other. Brad took that baby hint and planned what WE realized was OUR FIRST "OFFICIAL DATE".
To be continued….
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