March 11th, 2009

Do you know what today is?

Go ahead and say no. I knew the answer before I asked. This is silly anyway.

Two years ago today, I was at school. It was a Wednesday. I was wearing a new green sweater (my birthday was two days before) and my hair was up. I'd given a speech that morning in my Speech Comm class before going to an all-worship chapel. That afternoon, I sat between Molly and Erica (my roommates) in Research Writing.

Classes at Moody are typically three hours long with a 20 minute break in the middle, so there's time to run home (if you live nearby), book it to a coffee shop, catch up with friends, or visit Facebook. The latter is what I was doing on that particular afternoon, and as I walked out of the computer lab, I was approached by Carson Day. {Not a typo on my part - I knew him so little that I thought that was his last name. He didn't form the "bumps" on his capitol letter "B" very well.}

This Mr. Day asked if I had a few moments of time to give him.
"Yes?" I was not sure what this was about.
"So, um, hey, did you hear about spring formal?"
"Yes." Hold on...do I know where this is going?
"Oh. Yeah, well, are you, um, seeing anyone?"
"Nooo..."
"Oh. So... would you like to go to Spring Formal with me?"
*pause*
"Sure"
"Awesome! And there's a dance afterward so we could go to that too, or not -- not if you don't want to. And we could go with your roommates or whatever. I'm excited! Tickets haven't come out yet but when they do, I'll be the first in line! I'll let you know when I get them..."
"Okay."
"Okay! Well, see ya in class!"
"See ya."

We parted ways, him going downstairs, presumably to make certain that tickets weren't flying out the door and me to find my roommates. We spent a few minutes in the library rehashing the conversation and discussing its unforeseen occurance.

Then, we returned to class. I remember that it was a strange day. After class, I misplaced Molly and Erica and found myself waiting outside the library for them to reappear. Carson walked by and began to make small talk: "So, your dad's a mechanic?" "Nooo..." "Hm. Brian (his roommate - also in my Speech class, where I guess he got his information) said he was. He said he worked with cars." "Oh. Yeah, he works at a car dealership. So I guess he works with cars..." And it went on like that until the roomies returned and we had to go.

Later that week (the next day), he emailed me to ask me if I would go to hear a speaker at a church that was in Spokane. Oddly enough, it was the church I had been attending. He didn't know that at the time but it pleased him greatly. He wore a suit that was too short in the arms.

From that email though, I did discover that his last name was Bay.