Lindsey Marie Maines

My first memories of when I met the love of my life date back to my junior year in High School. We actually met the year before, her freshman year my sophomore year, during marching band. My earliest memory, kind of funny, probably not the sweetest one, was on my 16th birthday. I remember she called me to wish me a happy birthday and I had no idea who I was talking to on the phone for a good 30 seconds. I think I had to ask, and even when she said "It's Lindsey", I said "Lindsey who". Romantic I know. But I did end up inviting her to my birthday party later that week. We had our first and only class, outside of band, Chemistry, together the fall semester of my junior year. The class size was uneven and I remember sitting by myself in the back of the room behind Lindsey and her friend Emily. When we had labs in the class, I got to partner up with them. As the class went on, our friendship grew.

It wasn't until around Valentine’s Day, 2001, that I found out, from Emily, that Lindsey liked me. I just so happened that Emily told me during band, and after during lunch, student council was selling flowers for Valentine’s Day. I bought one and gave to to Lindsey and asked her if she wanted to go and see a movie the following weekend. Our first date was on February 17, 2001. It was a Saturday night, and she was staying at her Dad's house that weekend. I remember her giving me his address, and driving over to the house, except that when I arrived on the street, all of the houses in the cul-de-sac didn't have their porch lights on and it was dark out. So here I am pulling in and out of just about every house on the street using my headlights to check the house numbers. It was probably 6 or 7 houses before I noticed that Lindsey had come outside and she what I was doing. After I finally found the house, we headed out to the movie theater in Sheffield Village to see Hannibal. Unfortunately, the theater was packed, and we both decided we didn't want to deal with the huge crowd, and went back to her Dad's to watch a movie instead. We watched The Silence of the Lambs, and part of Road Trip. It got late and I went home, hopeful to see her again soon. I remember I had to work the next day and while at work. I heard through one of the customers, that NASCAR great Dale Earnhardt Sr. had died on the last lap of the Daytona 500. I think hearing that news was the only thing other than Lindsey that ran through my mind all day. After work, I went back over to see her and we finished watching the rest of Road Trip. After the movie, I asked her to be my girlfriend, and we officially began dating.

We spent the next month spending every second we could together at school and every weekend she was over her dad's. Unfortunately, she broke up with me just before our one month anniversary and her 16th birthday. I was bummed, but not totally heartbroken. I guess my subconscious knew she would be back someday. The rest of my junior year we saw each other in passing and while in band. That summer while making my rounds at graduation parties I began hanging out with my ex-girlfriend, also named Linze, whom I had dated the previous winter. Lindsey had also gotten back together with her ex-boyfriend as well.

Once marching band started back up, Lindsey and I found ourselves in similar situations. We both had significant others that were older than us and going away to college in the Fall. We started hanging out during practices and the attraction that started the previous Spring began to redevelop. All of our friends knew we were going to start dating again, most of them, I think even thought we were dating during band camp. We went everywhere together, and were pretty much inseparable. However we still had to end things with our current college girlfriend/boyfriend, and that really didn't happen until well after school had started and it was almost October.

I say October because our anniversary of our first date is October 4, 2001. I still argue with her to this day and probably will forever, that this is just a day that she pulled out of the sky as our anniversary. I say this for a few reasons. If you look back at a calendar for this day, I believe it was a Tuesday. There is no way we went out on a date on a weeknight, because her mom never really let us see each other on school nights, at least when we first started dating. Also, I have a very good memory, thus I am writing these memories down for you all to read. I remember the most random things, dates, events from our relationship so far and I have no recollection of this first date. Either way, October 4, 2001 is our "1st Date" anniversary.

This is a start so far. I will post this and add more later. There is a lot of story to tell…