The Most Unlikely Couple ~ Part VI ~ Roman numerals: Yuck

For those that missed them, here are Parts One, Two, Three, Four, and Five. Last one. Then, because I believe in the power of dreams, I'm going to take my shot at being a NASCAR driver and blog about it. Let me know if you need cigarettes or chewing tobacco.

I lied to you. Right there in the final paragraph of Part V. I made it sound like, on a drive back from Los Angeles, I waited until Cedar City, Utah, to call Amy. Not true. First, I called her outside of Las Vegas. That call was just to satisfy the voice in my head saying, "Call Amy" over and over again. It was 9 a.m. Central Daylight Time. She was at work and I knew it. Voicemail. No need to leave a message. Done and done. She didn't have my Utah cell phone number. She would have no idea who had called. Take that, voice inside my head.

Then, as previously mentioned, the voice got incessant. "Call Amy. Call Amy. Call Amy," it said. Fine, I decided in St. George, Utah. I'll wait until Cedar City. Less canyons. Better cell-phone coverage. I'm pragmatic, if nothing else.

I am not implying one of us is an alien.

"Amy Marie J. This is James PS. How are you doing? You should give me a call sometime. My phone number is 801-257-8900. Goodbye."

I drove directly from Los Angeles to my employer in Salt Lake City. I arrived at work promptly and on-time for my 3:30 p.m. shift. And I sort of forgot that I had called Amy until 6:30 that night, when my phone rang. "Hi there," she said, before we had really said anything. It was, instantly, like having your best friend back. I moved up to a corner by the elevators at work (in our old building on Main Street) and sat on the floor. We talked for 45 minutes.

I told Amy what I had been up to. She told me what was going on with her. She had started attending my old church, The Vineyard. She had quit her old job and was loving her new one as a patient educator at her new job, telling people about the evils of McDonalds. Which dovetails nicely with her soon-to-be newfound profession. She was a changed person. I was, too. We hung up.

The next night, out of the blue and a very brief e-mail exchange, she called me again. I will never forget her words, early in the conversation as if they were bursting out of her. "I'm not saying I'm interested," she started, "but I'm not saying I'm not interested." This possibility had not occurred to me. "So what you're saying," I said slowly as I computed, "Is that you might be interested in ... us?" Yes. That was it. "Here's what I need," I told her. "I need you to pursue me this time around. I am a catch."

I am a catch. That phrase reflects both the most confident and arrogant I have ever been in my dating life. I think she kind of liked that. I'm probably wrong. Amy called me every night for the next week. We were hitting it off again. Over the phone. She was in Duluth; I was in Salt Lake. We talked about God. We talked about our lives. We talked about climate – I like warm places, she likes a change of seasons, we're never living in Texas – and we discussed, eventually, marriage. It was like, in an instant, having your best friend back. You didn't realized how much you missed each other until that phone rang. Every night.

The happy couple, plus niece.

This took about six weeks. I visited Duluth for about 48 hours, at the start of the 2004 Olympics. We went to Lakeview Castle. Where else would you go? Olive Garden? To the outside world, we were moving fast. But we talked every day. We acknowledged we weren't going to rush anything. We wouldn't do anything we weren't comfortable with. And yet, to the outside world, I'm confident that's it looked like we were sprinting. But we prayed about. We asked God to put up a brick wall in front of us if what we were doing was wrong. Instead, doors opened. It was decided I was going to ask The Question. I'm pretty confident neither Amy nor I could tell you which of us brought up the topic first. That's how in-synch we were.

By late August, I had a ring box in my dresser. She was coming for a visit in mid October. When Amy and I would talk at night, I would pull the ring box out, open it and snap it closed while we were on the phone together. "Stop it!" She would yell into the phone.

Before anything official happened, I had a trip to the Pacific Northwest with my parents scheduled. Who vacations with their parents? This guy. We went to seafood places. I got sick. We went to Mt. Ranier. I couldn't leave the car because I was sick. We went to Portland. I dragged them around town. We went back to Seattle. And there, inside the Seattle Mariners' stadium in early September, I finally told my parents. Not only did they have no idea that Amy and I were planning to get married, they had no idea we were even back in contact. And so, as the Red Sox began to play the Mariners, I told my parents that I was, indeed, back in contact with Amy J. I was going to ask her to marry me and she was going to say yes.

Two things happened after that. Manny Ramirez proceeded to put on the worst display of fielding over 9 innings I have ever seen a baseball player put on; and my Mom made my Dad switch seats with her so she could grill me about Amy. The barrage lasted for four innings. The questions weren't negative. It was just so ... sudden. As it was for a lot of people. We did, after all, go from not talking to each other to engaged (virtually) in two months.

On Oct. 15, Amy arrived in Salt Lake for a visit. She was spending four nights in Utah with me. It was cloudy and unseasonably cool. Brighton opened for skiing Oct. 29 that year. I picked her up at the airport. She knew she was getting proposed to. There was no way to surprise this girl. I did what I could. I drove her straight to K2 The Church. We walked in. We walked up front. I dropped to one knee and asked her to marry me. And then I asked a second time, to elicit an answer.

That's not beer being illegally transported.
Matt, carry the heavy stuff. Jimmy U's sleeping in the moving van.

Somewhere around this point, we became a lot like every other couple. Maybe you think we were like every other couple to begin with and I've just wasting your time all week. We waited until mid-June — June 18, 359 days after that phone call outside of Cedar City — and we were married in an outdoor ampitheater set in a garden. It was perfectly sunny and 79 degrees. And then I started annoying her and she began pestering me. She doesn't like the way I do laundry or dishes (incomplete, on both counts). We often go more than 24 hours without seeing, or really even talking, to one another. We cried together, taking turns consoling the other, when our beloved dog, Duke, died. We rejoice in sending each other cute photos of our new beloved dog, Daisy. My friend Matt Whaley has twice driven our stuff from Minnesota to Utah. There ought to be a medal. Then once he did an inter-Utah move and again he moved us 2,900 miles East to Maine last May. We're a normal couple. We forget the very, very thin line that connects us. If Paul Tschida and I hadn't started playing basketball. If he hadn't gone to shoot pool. If she hadn't done laundry. If Paul and I hadn't reconnected. If I hadn't sent a spur-of-the-moment e-mail about moving to Duluth. If.



A few weeks ago, I started a blog. Perhaps you noticed. And Amy, in her cute way, was pestering me. "When are you going to write about me?" she would ask in her sweet way that implies she sort of cares but doesn't want to appear as though she really cares. "When are you going to write about meeeeee?" Never. This blog isn't about us. Nobody cares about us. People don't want to read about us. We are not that interesting. I'm crazy about you. You're sappy about me. People have seen it all before.

And then, out of the blue, somebody pops me a note on Facebook. My Mom had forwarded an e-mail to a Minnesota neighbor from our childhood, Lois. Lois, in turn, forwarded that e-mail to a group of friends. A woman in that group named Mary Tschida responded to Lois. And then, Sunday night of this week, Lois asked me on Facebook: Do you know Paul Tschida?

Yes. I know Paul Tschida.

I ran out of pictures of Amy and me.