Our Story

Jared and I have one of the best stories in the history of storydom. Trust me, Nicholas Sparks has nothing on us. (I know, I’m a “real” literary author. Why would I bring up Nicholas Sparks?) Well, even if Nicholas Sparks is crappy “airport literature,” it’s pretty romantic when you’re living it.

Jared and I officially met when I was in tenth grade and he was in eighth grade. I know, scandalous! Here’s evidence:

Yes, that’s right, folks! Back when there was all kinds of anti-drug grant money, we were recruited by our music teachers to co-write an anti-drug musical for the sixth grade to perform. If you notice the faint underlining, Jared underlined our names because he was so excited to see them in the newspaper together. How sweet!

So, we lived together in band geekdom bliss for a period of high school. We went to solo/ensemble competitions. Jared would call me up on the phone and play guitar into the receiver. We went to homecoming together my junior year. When someone would say, “I can’t believe you took a freshman to homecoming,” I would say, “Just look at him!” I mean, really? Right?

Unfortunately, the universe abhors happiness and balance, and Jared and I got caught making out in the high school library (Geek girls, imagine this–Jared Pennington *and* books? Am I right, or am I right? There hasn’t been a greater temptation since Eve’s little mishap in the Garden of Eden.) Anyway, we got into huge trouble, and concerned members of Jared’s family and church told him we should probably break up because I was a “wild, older girl.”

Mothers of sons, if I can teach you one thing, it’s that you WANT your son to end up with a “wild, older girl.” Because you know what? If someone messes with your son, a “wild, older girl” will @$%# them up. Think about it. Most of the women who’ve ever made a difference in history have probably been wild older girls. If I could pick out traits in a daughter, I’d want her to be VERY pretty, a little dangerous, and wicked smart. In short, someone who will someday be a “wild, older girl.”

Fast forward about sixteen years. YES. Sixteen years. Jared and I had gone our separate ways. He had gone into the Marines, gotten married, gotten divorced. I had gone to college, gotten married, gone to grad school, gotten divorced, gone to grad school, gotten married, and was getting divorced. (I like patterns, can you tell?). Anyway, when Jared found me on Facebook, I wasn’t even living at home. I was staying at a friend’s house because I was trying to get out of an abusive marriage and was waiting for my scary soon-to-be-ex to vacate my house so I could live in it again. It was a really sad, low, embarrassing point in my life, and I wasn’t sure if I should bring it up or even mention it to Jared.

By the way, this is what his Facebook profile pic looked like then:

When I told Jared what was going on, he was the most wonderful, supportive person you could imagine. In short, he was the same Jared he’d been in high school…and before, even. When I finally got back into my house and was trying to clean it up from the trashed state my ex had left it in, I would call Jared and he’d talk me through doing little tasks because it was all so overwhelming. Imagine someone leaving moldy food and trash and dirty dishes all over your house for a month and not doing anything about it. It was bad. Bad.

Eventually, Jared very romantically and knight-in-shining-armorly loaded up everything he owned, including his lovely dog Cleo, into his pick-up and moved here. He even said things that sounded like romantic movie lines, such as, “No one’s ever going to treat you that way again.”

So, here we are. One of our first weekends that Jared was here, I had a poetry reading to give at the coast:

and Jared played guitar with my friends James and Julz (and Perry on bass).

But how did we get *here*? you may ask. Here-Here. Reading-our-Baby-Blog-Here? How in the heck are the Band Director’s Award Winners of Argos High School for 1995 and 1997 having a baby in 2011? Well, we’re crazy and romantic artist types. Jared said, “You know. If we hadn’t broken up in high school, we’d probably have kids now.” And so, we decided that would be our next adventure.

Thank you for joining us.