How I Met Boyfriend and How He Lied About Being Old...

Boyfriend’s birthday is on Wednesday and he will be 32 years old. In my Oregon Trail post I wrote about how we try not to have “how old were you when…” conversations because it can quickly get awkward, but other than that our age difference isn’t a big deal at all. Of course it helped that when we first started dating he told me he was really like 2 years younger than he really was.

Let’s go back…

I met Boyfriend when I was 20 and living with Davis Girl and Boy Roommate. We had all just moved in together and I was pretty much having THE WORST SUMMER EVER!!! My boyfriend at the time, Ex-Boyfriend, had just left to study abroad in Amsterdam for a year and I broke my foot on Old Co-Workers head at Shlitterbahn and had to walk around in a black boot all summer. So, there I was crying every day because I missed Ex-Boyfriend (well and because I was fucking pissed that he had the nerves and balls to leave me for a whole year and not just a semester like normal college students), and hobbling around on my retarded foot… it wasn’t a pretty picture. Davis Girl and Boy Roommate spent a lot of that summer getting me out of the house and cheering me up. One of the ways Boy Roommate did this was to take me to play water volleyball.

Let’s go back even further…

This game of water volleyball has been going on since the early 1990’s. Technically a few people would argue it goes back even further than then, but the early 90’s is when Chief started playing and he’s Chief so that’s where I’ll start. You see Chief was a spry Doctoral Student at UT and moved into this new apartment complex that had a water volleyball pool. After a lot of practicing and playing and inviting of friends, Chief became Chief and he has stayed there ever since. So the game now is a big mixture of people. Some people live or, more usually, lived in the complex and found the game addicting. Others, like myself, were brought to the game by someone else who knew about it. Boy Roommate many, many years earlier had lived at the complex and started playing. Like almost everyone else, he had moved away, but still came back Wednesdays, Thursdays, and the weekends to play ball.

I met Boyfriend that first summer I started going to the pool. He was never rude or mean by any means, but he wasn’t exactly friendly either. He was just quiet, which I always thought was sort of odd because his best buddy, his hetero life mate in the world of water volleyball, was the loudest most obnoxious person out there. (And, according to Davis Girl, “the cute one”.)

Some people I met playing water volleyball…

Chief (who holds a PhD from UT in History)
Creepy (whose real name is John)
Wescott (who just might be the most competitive person I’ve ever met in my life, but his parents are like poets or English Professors, so I think it kinda makes since. Also he did a project for one of his classes about the evolution of the AWVP’s terminology. Check it out here.)
Pat (who wears funny glasses)
Jess (Boyfriend’s Hetero life mate who is the other half of The Wild Boys, yes my boyfriend is a “wild boy”)
Rachel (Jess’ Ex-girlfriend who I was told, “can fuck you up” on my first night at the pool by Navy. No, I was never “fucked up” by Rachel)
Jim Back (no words can describe Jim Back, except that he is a father now and “I weep for the future”)
Bunny (because who don’t love a Big Lewbowski refrenece)
OJ (“Other Jesus” because one savoir just isn’t evough)

If you would like to learn more about the AWVP please click here.

Yeah so summer number 1 Boyfriend didn’t say two words to me.

During summer number 2, the next summer when I was 21, Boyfriend asked out my roommate. My male roommate. So, one Saturday there weren’t that many people at the pool playing, which is very odd for a weekend in the summer. There was however a whole lot of beer and a very hot sun. Needless to say, we all got quiet drunk very easily. With a little beer in his system Boyfriend got up the nerve to not only start talking to me, but also start flirting. It was nice. Then as the sun started dipping behind the buildings and games started slowing down, he went up to Boy Roommate…

Boyfriend: “So, what are you going to do tonight?”

Boy Roommate: “Um, I don’t know man. Davis Girl is working so Lemon Lady and I will probably just chill at home.”

Boyfriend: “Oh… Oh, well some friends and I are going downtown and you should totally come. It will be fun.”

Boy Roommate: “Um, sure…”

Boyfriend: “Yeah… okay… andyoushouldbringLemonLadywithyou.”

Boy Roommate: “Yeah, sure, okay.”

That’s how it happened. Boyfriend asked out Boy Roommate and the rest is history.

Now, Boyfriend’s age came up that very day at the pool. I will swear on my death bed that when I asked Boyfriend how old he was that day he told me 26. I had never dated anyone more than a year older than me and 26 was a big pill to swallow. In my head I thought of his age like this…

“26 is almost like being 25 and 25 is still considered early (okay maybe mid) 20s. So really he’s not that much older than me.”

Then a few weeks later I found out that Boyfriend was really 27, not 26, and he was about to turn 28 in October. In a matter of weeks, Boyfriend aged 3 years. It’s a good thing I was already completely in love.

And because I'm a sucker for cute photos... here are some from that second summer together playing ball.