How I Met My Girlfriend Who Studies Chemistry: Part I

Tiffany doesn’t remember the first time we met, but I do. I was a senior in high school on a soccer recruiting trip to Boston University. She was one of the freshmen on the team assigned to entertain me and the other recruits for part of the weekend. I wish I could tell you it was love at first sight, but she and I were 18 and 17 years, respectively, into the closet. You don’t spend a lot of time looking for love at first sight from back there.

After I joined the team the next year, some of the girls swore I was wearing overalls when I arrived that weekend. I continue to contest this version of events. Although I’m sure I wore something highly unfashionable, it would not have been overalls. I did own a pair at one time, from the Gap or some such place, but only because my mom insisted I buy them. She thought they were adorable. I hated them. No matter how I adjusted the straps, it was like constant wedgie, all the time.*

Anyway, everyone who thinks I was wearing overalls is probably just projecting their feelings about Kansas onto me. From the moment I arrived, it was a constant barrage of questions:

“Do you have electricity where you live?”

“Do you live on a farm?”

“Do you have, like, cows?”

“You’re from Kansas?” Tiffany asked. “Like, KansASS?”

That’s really the only thing I remember Tiffany saying to me the whole weekend. In spite of this abuse, I loved Boston and all the girls on the team. I made up my mind to go there while riding the T, my feet spread slightly to keep my balance between the squeaky stops and starts and groaning lurches. None of the places I had ever lived — Texas, Mississippi, Kansas — had a subway system. Where I was from, if you wanted to go somewhere, you got in a car and drove there.

I saw on the system map above Tiffany’s head that the T would take me to points in every direction, a beach called Revere and the airport. In other words, anywhere I’d ever need to go. I felt alive with possibilities.

*The other story that circulates about my fashion is that I arrived for pre-season camp the next year wearing a tye-dye shirt. Sadly, this is true. Even though I was a freshman in college more than 10 years ago, that was still about 10 years after tye-dye went out of fashion. But, as you’ll see below, I was very, very nervous about being away from home and when I’m nervous I like to have things that make me feel good on or around me. The girl I’d been babysitting since she was born — the little sister I never had — made me that tye-dye shirt. She thought I was a miracle worker. I needed all the confidence I could wear.

(To be continued... This is the first part in a four-part series I unveiled in honor of my 100^th blog post. For the next post in the series, click here.)