A Real Story the Boy

By RTF Editor B.J. Hamrick

We interrupt our usually scheduled sarcasm for this brief announcement: Three years ago, my life was forever altered by someone I didn’t know. Someone I thought didn’t exist. Someone I swore had died at birth.

Until I met him.

“Mom,” I announced .2 seconds after I laid eyes on the boy, “I’ve found the man I am going to marry.”

If this seems fast to you, imagine how my mother felt. In one brief second I went from spouting math equations like, “Singleness = happiness and marriage = bondage”, to asking, “Where’s the church and the white dress?”

I had no idea this story actually began nine years earlier.

He told me about it that day, on our first date. The air was chilly and crisp, the smell of fall hung thick in the sky.

“I met you once before,” he said as we walked. “Nine years ago.”

Then he said something that made me reel: “I had a crush on you.”

Wait a second. Nine years ago. Was he kidding? That would make me… 14 years old. Do you know what I looked like when I was 14?

Skinny. Scrawny. Sick. Relentless seizures. Mind-numbing medications. Barely able to put a sentence together.

He had a crush on that?

It sealed the deal in my mind.

“Will you marry me?” I asked.

Not really. Not out loud, anyway. But my heart was in awe. This boy looked beyond my skinny. My scrawny. My sick.

And he loved me. Just the way I was.

It’s been three years, and I love him more every day.

Sometimes I have to pinch myself. Is it true? Is this is the man I didn’t know? The man who didn’t exist? The man I once claimed had died at birth?

I guess you can see how happy I am to be a fan of the new math. It goes something like this: Singleness = sadness and marriedness = happiness.

But only when you’ve found the person who loves you from the inside out. Happy anniversary, Babe. I love you.

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B.J. and Ethan are the editors of RTF and The Bare Naked Truth. ****

REAL QUESTION: What do you hope for in a mate?