Weekly Story Corner - Week 2

Chapter 2: Stepping Back

(Jessica -and Adrianne and Tammy-and Ryan, right around the time the dating commenced...can anyone tell me why she wouldn't be head-over-heels for this specimen of manhood?! <--- pictures posted by jessica w/o any form of either verbal or written consent. I should sue.)

(What the @#$&??? - I am 16 in this picture!!! ... I don't know why my wife posts her at 22 and me at 16. She is falsely representing "the way we were")

If there is one thing that my marriage has taught me, it is that Jessica is not one to change her mind readily. Once it is set on something, a nearly unearthly effort is required to convince her to change her mind. My schooling in this lesson began from the very start of our relationship. After our first date, I could tell that while Jessica genuinely enjoyed me, she wasn’t really interested. However, since I am someone who embraces life’s challenges head on, I decided that the only appropriate course of action would be to find another girl just like Jessica with the exception that she was more easily smitten by me. Surely there must be boatloads of such girls out there.

It only took me the three months between our first date and Jessica’s final return home as a BYU alumni for me to realize my mistake. There just weren’t any other girls like her out there. I decided to stake my claim and change her mind. So I told my good “friend” that Jessica was mine. I clearly explained that when she got back from college that I was going to date her. Despite the fact that he appeared to be fluent in English, there must have been some sort of miscommunication, because I came to find out AFTER Jessica and I were married, that he happened to be in the Sherrill neighborhood quite often, and that he even went so far as to invite himself over for Sunday dinner and tried to make all nicey-nice with mom and dad.

The dating pool in the San Joaquin valley wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be. But the silver lining around that cloud was that for as bad as it was in the female end of the pool, the male end was far more shallow. I had it all planned out in advance. In fact I even explained my strategy to my comprehension challenged "friend." I would simply wait her out. I would continue to be my fun-loving, charismatic self while allowing Jessica the opportunity to get a good look around. I wanted her to have ample time to weigh out her options. I figured that once her eyes adjusted to her new surroundings, she would begin to see things my way a little bit more.

So after her arrival home, our little dance began. I would ask her out relatively frequently and she would come up with increasingly less plausible excuses for not accepting. It became a joke for me and my friends. Whenever we planned any sort of group date I would jokingly inquire … “should I ask Jessica?”

“Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah! Ask her out again,” they would laugh as bets began to be placed on how long her rejection would take or what excuse would be used. I would then call her with all of them sitting around me as I tried to be as charming as possible. I would bat away their muffled snickering as Jessica would tell me how sorry she was that she wouldn’t be available “that night.” In fact, we kind of made it a ritual of sorts. Jessica always got a call before, I asked out whoever my real date was. They loved watching the anticipated rejection come.

My favorite excuse came one night as I called Jessica around 8:00 p.m. to see if she was up for some activity. She told me that she was really tired and that she was just about to go to bed. As she said this I checked the clock in disbelief. The A-Team was our family’s favorite show the last time I had gone to bed that early. It was then and there that I realized that she was never going to come around. I decided that it would be more humane for the both of us if I didn’t keep pressing the issue. I had called her for the last time.

That decision marked a turning point in our relationship.