True Love
I'm not sure if this is a talent
exactly but since this is a Valentine's activity I thought it would
be appropriate to share a story about true love.
I've been told I have a talent for
telling stories, but I think what people are really saying is that I
have a talent for finding myself in odd situations which happen to
make good stories. So, for those of you who know me well I apologize
if you've heard this before.
I've been thinking about the concept of
“true love”. There are a myriad of opinions about what
constitutes true love and I've been taking a look at our relationship
to see if we fit the mold. I haven't told Marc my conclusions yet, so
he might be a little bit nervous right now.
I mean, if we are going by the
definition, “Love means never having to say you're sorry,” then
we are in really big trouble. We say “sorry” a lot. For Marc it's
usually “Honey, I'm sorry I ate your secret stash of chocolate.”
and for me it's more often, “Sorry that I left my shoes in the
middle of the floor and you almost tripped and died.” Clearly, Marc has more to be sorry for than I do.
If we are going by the idea that True
Love is marrying your best friend then we are also in trouble.
If we are being loose with definitions, then Marc and I knew each
other for a total of nine months before we got married. That might
seem like a long time, but long enough for someone to be your best
friend? I'm not sure. Let me break it down for you. During the first
four months of our “relationship” I was under the impression that
Marc was a nerd who came to my Honors Astronomy class at BYU every
morning at 8 am with his girlfriend and wrecked all of the curves on
the tests. I was right about everything except the “girlfriend”
part. Turns out that was his sister.
In month five, Marc showed up in my
Honors Biology class. I wasn't too pleased to see him, until it
turned out he was the T.A. Fine. Coincidentally, this was also the
first time I learned his name.
The following day we hit it off at a
scholarship banquet at which he made the very bold move of asking
someone to change seats so that he could sit by me at dinner. He had
my attention. We had a great time, I hinted that I would like him to
walk me home, he didn't get the hint and so I would spend the next
two and half weeks wondering if he had just been pretending to be
interested in me or if maybe he had gone back to that "girlfriend" from
last semester. I ran into him all the time on campus. We would
always chat and then I might say something like, “What are you
doing for lunch?” and he would answer, “I'm going to go eat this
frozen burrito. Bye.” I mean, I was a freshman with a Dining Plus
card. I could have taken him to the Sky Room restaurant or something,
but I'm sure that frozen burrito was way better. Yeah, not a
hint-getter. He apparently thought I was also not a hint-getter
because when he did finally ask me out on a date at the very end of
month five, he described what we would be doing and then added, “It
will be a date. Is that okay with you?” Roger that, AOK good buddy.
In the beginning of month six, we had
been on four dates and decided that we were now “dating”. A week
after that he asked me to marry him. Being eighteen and completely
shocked by this idea, I didn't answer him until the next day. That
was a little bit of an awkward phone call. The phone rang, he answered and I said, “Yes.” “Yes what?”
“Yes, I want to marry you.” “Are you serious?” Yep, totally
serious.
Three months later we were married. So,
“best friends”? Probably not.
But what if we use the definition that
true love is a total and complete trust? That true love means never
doubting that you made the right decision. I wish I could say that we
pass this test, and to be fair we probably would now, and if you
would have asked me on the day we got married I would have said that I didn't have any doubts. Of course, that was before the
arrest.
So, we got married in Utah on a
beautiful day in May, we drove cross-country to my home in Ohio for a
lovely open-house with my friends and in early June we were driving
back to Utah so we would be home in time to start Summer Term.
In Indiana, we had a little bit of a
delay. We got pulled over. This was confusing, because Marc wasn't
really speeding, maybe 3 over at the most. So he pulled over, rolled
down his window and waited for the cop. He didn't come. Instead, as
we watched in our rearview mirror, more and more police cars were
coming. Clearly, this cop had called for back-up. I looked at Marc,
he looked a little scruffy. He hadn't shaved. I wasn't wearing any
makeup and my hair was in a ponytail. Pretty much I looked exactly
like I do now, only 13 years younger. Anyway, I didn't think we
looked like hardened criminals but the cars just kept coming. There
were now six police cars behind ours and I was starting to panic. Did
they think we had drugs in our trunk? I hoped not because that trunk
was packed with wedding gifts and if they opened it there would be an
explosion of cutlery and towel sets all over the freeway.
At that point they drew their guns and
started yelling instructions at us. For the first time, I felt some
real empathy for the criminals on the show COPS. It is really
embarrassing to be standing on the side of the road with your hands
on your head.
I was too afraid to turn and look, but
out of the corner of my eye, I saw several men grab Marc, slam him
against the car, handcuff him and drag him away for questioning.
That's when it hit me. I had married a convicted felon. I mean, he
seemed like a nice guy, a perfect guy really but he must have a
checkered past. I had heard crazy stories like this before, of
someone leading a double life and I had fallen for it. I mean, I knew that I
was innocent and the cops had no interest in the contents of our car,
so what other explanation could there be?
As I stood there, in shock, a seventh
police vehicle came screaming down the highway, did a one-eighty and
stopped right in front of our car. The cop jumped out, ran over and
dragged me away from the car. He asked me simple questions that I
couldn't answer like, “What's your name?”
“Um, Sarah.... Jean.............. I
can't remember my new last name! I just got married!”
“You got married.... to this guy?
This guy is you husband?”
Yep. Definitely a convicted felon.
“Okay. How old are you?”
“Eighteen, no! Nineteen! I'm
nineteen, I just had a birthday.”
“You just had a birthday?”
I'm sure he's thinking- this girl can't
get her story straight.
Finally, they put me in a cruiser and
someone sat down next to me to explain what was happening. They said
that someone had called in a tip about a kidnapping out of Salt Lake.
They thought I was a 14-year-old girl and that Marc had kidnapped me.
We were able to sort it all out after I showed them my driver's
license and they let us both go with profuse apologies. We later
thought that we should have asked for a speeding immunity card or
something. Anyway, I felt terrible that I had doubted my sweet
husband and also that I looked disheveled enough that someone thought
I was a kidnapping victim. I was so embarrassed of these panicked
thoughts that I didn't tell Marc about them for ten years.
On our tenth anniversary, I said,
“Remember when all of those policemen pulled us over in Indiana?”
“Yeah...” “What were you thinking when all of that was
happening? Did you think that I must have done something wrong or
that I was leading a double life or something? I mean, we were still
getting to know each other really.” “No, I knew there just must
be some big mistake.” “Oh. Me too. I didn't think anything crazy
about you either, except I did think that maybe you were a convicted
felon leading a double life and you had tricked me into marrying
you.”
I wasn't sure how that sentence would
go over. I was worried he would be terribly hurt, but he just thought
it was funny. He's forgiving like that.
The good news for us is, that William
Shakespeare- world renowned expert on romance wrote that, “The
course of True Love never did run smooth.” and we fit that
definition perfectly.
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