This week has been crazy. I've officially started wedding planning and I am doing it for a wedding that is going to happen on August 20th, 2011. Yes, 2011. I know I am crazy for only giving myself a few months, but what the heck. If I don't do it now then I'm never going to do it. Jay and I have been living together for almost three years now. And then there's the whole, we've been engaged since December 24th, 2008. I have been engaged for over two years now. This is just crazy.
Maybe it isn't crazy. I kind of like the fact that Jay and I have been together for five years now. At least I really know the guy I am going to marry. Made a little mistake somewhere around 21 and didn't do that then. Let's just say that I had a slight sickness from the time I was 20 until I was 22. I'm going to claim that I have amnesia and don't remember much about those years.
Actually, I could probably blame alcohol. Fort Bragg was not good to my liver. It was very bad. From the time I was 18 until I was about 25, I was always a vodka drinker. I would order double shots of vodka at the bar and drink at least 5 of those, plus whatever mixed drink I was feeling at the moment.
I remember a stretch from October 2000 to March 2001, that nearly every night was at a bar. For awhile there my roommate, Amanda and I, would follow our favorite singers, Paddy and Bill, to every bar that they played. We were all over Fayetteville, North Carolina. I think it was because I was so independent and out all of the time that the guy I was dating at the time liked me. I don't think he really cared to have a girlfriend that wanted to be the girlfriend that was thinking of settling down. Kurt was more out there to have fun.
I really liked the guy, but didn't like the fact that he liked to hang out when he felt like hanging out. He didn't like the fact that I always hung out with whoever I wanted to, but oddly enough that is what drew him to me in the first place. He thought it was so cool that this chick was hanging out with all of his infantry friends all of the time and it seemed that she totally fit in. The problem was when that chick became his girlfriend things changed and he didn't necessarily want her hanging out with the guys when he wasn't around. So the relationship strained and I was feeling it was time to meet a new guy.
I was continually going to bars and running into guys from the past. The part right before the amnesia starts to kick in. So besides hanging out with my infantry guys I was also hanging out with some MPs. MPs can be fun. They also can help keep you out of trouble. Or they can cause it.
I had one very strange night at the bar which was the start of an MP getting me into trouble. I was out with my boyfriend and the whole pack of infantrymen we tended to hang out with. In all I think there was about 12 of us and me and Amanda being the only girls. On this night, though, I ran into my old MP friends too, which amounted to about 4. Not really too many. Well, my boyfriend was firmly planted at the downstairs bar, while I was up dancing in the upstairs bar. Then the MPs introduced me to one of their female MPs. Well, to shorten things up, by the end of the night she was asking me to come home with her. Well, that was my cue to say, "I should probably be getting back downstairs to Kurt. I bet he wonders where I am." Of course, he was so deep into his Jack Daniels that he probably couldn't tell me from anyone else.
A few days later I was heading to a concert with two of my infantry boy friends. While driving to their barracks from my house I get pulled over. Wouldn't you know that it is the female MP from the other night. She took my license, registration, and insurance and went back to her car. When she came back, handing me my stuff and a ticket, she kindly said, "I guess you should have came home with me that night." Do you think I paid that ticket? That's a big no.
The concert was Cold, Staind, and Godsmack. It was absolutely insane. I made it all the way to the second row behind the barrier on the floor and then Staind opened up with this.
Let's just say I made it to the back pretty quickly after that. I thought I was going to be trampled. When Staind was finished it was time for Godsmack. I was going back up front again. I had lost the guys I went to the concert with, but had run into a guy that was in my company. He wanted to get up front and I told him I had no problem doing it before so I could do it again. I told him to stand behind me and hold on to my shirt and I would get us to the front. I got us pretty close. We were four rows of people away from the stage by the time this song came on.
The odd thing about this concert is that it is the reason my life turned around. While in a sea of bodies moving to the music a skinny shirtless guy asked if the guy behind me was my boyfriend. Of course I told him no. Then later on he yelled to me his phone number. I didn't plan on calling him.
It was the next morning at PT formation that my platoon sergeant, SSG Ward, asked me how the concert was. I said it was great and a pretty cute guy gave me his phone number. She bet me $20 that I wouldn't call him. I didn't want to lose the bet. The only reason I remembered his phone number was because the first three numbers were Fort Bragg barracks and the last four were the same as my dad's phone number.
So, I called the guy. Found out his name was Keith. He was watching the Breakfast Club and invited me over to his barracks room. That was March 8th, 2001. Sean Robert Krouse was born January 22nd, 2002. So you can see what happened there. A strange thing happened at a concert that turned my life around.
So, I thank you Keith for yelling me your phone number and I thank you even more for leaving me when I told you I wouldn't marry you and get out of the Army. If Keith wouldn't have come and gone I would have never had the chance to meet Jay.
The first few years Jay and I were together we weren't really together. We both started out in Iraq, having met in March 2006. Then I went back to Hawaii in September 2006. Then he went back to Illinois in December 2006. Then I got out of the Army, but moved back to Michigan in July 2007. During that time we listened to these two songs a lot.
See what I mean about the ADD. I was talking about getting married and you got the whole story about me being a drunkard and meeting Sean's Dad. I'm quite the odd individual.
No comments:
Post a Comment