Brittany's Baggage

I've been getting several emails a day from LDSmingle.com for the last couple of weeks. For a while, I didn't like the idea of finding a date over the internet, but it's so much easier than finding someone in person.

This girl, Brittany, and I have been exchanging emails daily. She's, by far, the coolest girl I've met online. She's got a little baggage, though. I guess everyone has baggage, but hers comes in the form of two children. Not that big of a deal, really, but they both have different dads, which means her baggage also includes two other guys. If both of the kids had the same father and the father was dead, then the only baggage would be the kids. Not the case with Brittany. The dads have partial custody so she's always coordinating visits and pickups and drop offs and crap.

Well, on Saturday our emails were getting pretty detailed. And they were happening in rapid succession. I'd send an email and about an hour later I'd have one back. Then I'd send my reply and then I'd get a reply. It pretty much sucked up my whole Saturday morning and afternoon. All of my roommates were coming and going, doing different things, but I was more interested in staying close to our computer.

At about seven o'clock Saturday night, Brittany and I began chatting since we figured it would be easier to communicate that way. It was pretty great. She was typing "lol" a lot. (Hopefully that means that I was really making her laugh.)

Then at about 10pm, she typed her phone number and told me to call her. I got really nervous... really fast. I was feeling like I was in my groove with the whole chat thing. I stalled for awhile... pretending I hadn't noticed. I changed the subject and made a few more jokes. Brittany kept telling me to call her. Finally, I told her that I was too scared to call her... which was true. She asked why and I told her the truth. What if she had been envisioning my voice as a few octaves deeper than it really was? What if I talked slower than she pictured and she thought I was retarded?

But I was also scared for another reason. What if she sounded like a man, or had a lisp, or couldn't say her R's very well? I didn't want to be put off, either. She seemed so awesome through emails and chats, but what if something was wrong with her voice?

It took her about 30 minutes to convince me to call her, but by about 11, I had made the call. She sounded beautiful. Her voice was perfect. She spoke at the right speed, no speech impediments, and she sounded like a woman... thankfully. Her laugh was perfect, as well. She lol-ed on the phone as often as she typed it, which made me think that she really was laughing every time she typed "lol".

I'm a pretty fast typer, but it was nice to be able to talk without the burden of typing and overlapping conversations and stuff.

Then, at about 1am, Brittany says, "You should just come over." "Nope. No way." was my reply. Brittany explained that her kids had been in bed for a while and her roommate (female) was watching TV in the front room and wouldn't care. "Sorry, Brittany. Not gonna happen." I told her that it was too late at night, I didn't know where she lived, and I was way too scared. I also explained that I'd never done anything similar to what she was proposing. Going to a girls house I'd never met at 1 in the morning? I also suggested that I might actually be a serial killer looking for my next single-mother victim. None of those things put her off. She insisted on giving me her address and asked me to write down directions, just in case I changed my mind.

I got a pen and paper and wrote down her address. While she was giving me directions, I watched my right hand shaking as I wrote them down. After I finished, I looked at the squiggly letters and numbers I'd written down while my hand was quivering. Even though I figured I wasn't going over to her house that night, I was still terrified at the possibility. Brittany actually noticed my voice shaking as I read everything back to her. She told me that I didn't have to stay very long at her house, but she just wanted to see me in person. That made me even more nervous. It sounded like the main reason she wanted to see me was to judge my appearance. Yikes!

It took Brittany about an hour to convince me to come over. I kept changing the subject to the topic of her kids, but she caught on quickly and kept on switching it back. She was begging. Literally, begging. Please, Calvin. Please. What's the big deal? We're going to meet eventually. Now's a perfect time. My kids are in bed. We're both awake. We obviously want to see each other.

All of those things were true. (My stomach hurts right now, just reliving it.) Finally, I swallowed my pride and nervousness and said, "Fine, Brittany. I'll come over. Just let me brush my teeth, put on some cologne and take a runny poo." I didn't say the "runny poo" part, but it was something I needed to do before I left.

I had a hard time breathing the whole time I was driving to Brittany's house. When I got there, she opened the door before I even got to her front porch. She was taller than I thought she'd be. Not, circus-freak tall. She was only about an inch or two shorter than me. But she was gorgeous. Extremely.

Her roommate was asleep on the couch so Brittany led me into her room. We sat on her bed and talked for about three hours. My nervousness faded quickly and our conversation never got boring. She turned off the main light and we talked with only her bedside lamp on. At about 4am, we were both laying down on her bed... still talking. I thought to myself, "I could probably kiss her right now. After all, she invited me over... we're in her room... on her bed... laying down..."

So I did. And she did. (I would go into more detail here, but Jake has enough details for the both of us in his last post) I went home at about 8am. It's times like these I actually wonder if I'm maybe an 8 or 9 or something... instead of a 6.5 like I've always thought.

Calvin