Romantic Moment on the Brougham Bridge - William Rowan Hamilton

[Ivan Seeking]

LOL, that was good.

 

[Evo]

A cute joke to lighten up this thread. The boy then plays his last card. He thinks of his father's advice and asks the girl the question: "If you had a brother, would he like spinach?"

I dated that guy.

 

[Zantra]

There was this one girl that I really liked in high school. I was kind of a nerd. Everyone knew who I was, but I wasn't exactly popular. She was beautiful and intelligent and a cheerleader. She was very popular. I didn't have the courage to ask her out.

She called me up once and asked for help with some homework. She didn't need any help with her homework. I had never given her my number. She must have found the number in the phone book. It wouldn't have been very difficult. My last name is rare and my first name is the same as my father's.

In my senior year we had a math class together. I would go to class early and sit there by myself waiting for class to begin, looking over my homework. Every morning I went to class she was in the hall talking with her friends. Eventually I would come into the class and she would come in a minute or two later and her friends were still out in the hallway. We sat there at separate tables hardly ever speaking for the five minutes before class.

I always said stupid things when I spoke with her. She always dressed very nicely and one time she had on this nice spring hat. I said "I like your hat." Later from her friends I heard that she thought I didn't like her hat. Another time she said something about cold showers making her sleepy. I said "That would make you cold-blooded." I don't think she took that very well either. I just never knew what to say around her and was always nervous. Another time we were having our picture taken in the local paper with about half a dozen other classmates. I couldn't smile because my lips wouldn't stay still. I had to bite my lip to stop it from shaking. The picture came out all goofy looking and one of my teachers pointed it out in class while she was there.

Another time I happened to be walking by and she was talking with a friend. She was dating a guy on the football team and her friend was trying to convince her to have sex with him. Talk about bad timing. I could have gone without hearing that.

All this happened over about 3 of the 4 years I was in high school. About a year after high school I found that I couldn't stop thinking about her and what would have happened if I had approached her. How different would my life have been? So I found her address from the school yearbook and wrote her a long letter. I waited about 2 weeks and didn't hear anything. (I had moved from MA to AZ) I got her phone number and called up. She asked how I was doing and I asked if she got my letter. She hung up the phone. I called back about a dozen times but she wouldn't speak with me. A few weeks later I got a short, direct letter from her. She was engaged to the the football player that she was dating in high school.

I took it pretty hard. He was a decent guy. I don't blame him. But I hated myself for not saying anything when I had the chance. The last time I saw her was 13 years ago, but I still think of her occasionally. It feels like a dull ache or maybe a thin veil over everything that makes the world look a little less real.

This could be my story almost word for word- except her boyfriend played basketball. We had a french class together in 8th grade. She used to cheer me on when I was running track in gym when we got to high school. I never even got the courage to talk to her,save once or twice- and let me just say that your comments were of the don juan caliber compared to the utterly horrifying and comical attempts at conversation I made with her. And I never tried to contact her until years later- of course she was married. But if it makes you feel any better, high school relationships rarely work out-that's what I tell myself anyhow. That and that she will probably turn into a cow after she has her first kid-it gets me by:P

Bleh- I'm happy now with the one I'm with, no point in lamenting something that could have ended up being a life-scarring event. Ok where's my beer?

 

[franznietzsche]

Well, I've given up on ever finding love.

Welcome to the club.

 

[Huckleberry]

I wouldn't say I'm scarred. Maybe something more like mild arthritis. I think the reason it still bothers me is because I haven't found anything to replace it yet and I'd rather hang onto it than feel nothing. I think the story is fairly common, which is pretty sad.

 

[Zantra]

someone wise once imparted this sentence on me and I've generally found it to be true:

As soon as you stop looking for love, love will find you.

IOW, being comfortable with yourself and not "needing a relationship" is a powerful aphrodisiac. Of course some of you will say this is utter BS- if so, can't help you

 

[Evo]

Welcome to the club.

You're too young to become bitter and jaded, that's for old folk like me.

 

[Moonbear]

someone wise once imparted this sentence on me and I've generally found it to be true:

As soon as you stop looking for love, love will find you.

IOW, being comfortable with yourself and not "needing a relationship" is a powerful aphrodisiac. Of course some of you will say this is utter BS- if so, can't help you

Only those who stumbled into love after they stopped looking say that.

 

[icvotria]

Ever since this thread started I've been racking my brains trying to recall my most romantic moment but couldn't come up with one. I've had romantic moments, just none that particularly stick out. But now I've got it. It's not boy-girl romantic, but it's just about as lovely as anything could possibly be. I live by myself, with just two fish and a beautiful ginger cat to keep me company (and wonderful company they are.) Last night I couldn't sleep for the life in me. When dawn came and all the birds started singing, my cat jumped onto the window sill and started making these really weird, clipped miaows. At first I thought she was ill or somehting, but she looked nice and happy, so I stopped worrying and went back to tossing and turning. But she kept on making these weird noises, I'll try and write them, 'mchrr', that looks right, over and over. Then this crow went 'caw!' and my cat went 'mchraw!' My cat wants to be a bird! She was totally copying them! Thinking 'my cat wants to be a bird' to myself was the best feeling in the whole world.

 

[The_Professional]

One spring day, as Mr. Right took a stroll with SOS in the park of Main Street, USA the fear of commitment suddenly overtook him. Mr. Right was so overwhelmed by the emotion he had a movement, which ultimately left his pants permanently stained.

So Mr. Right is committment phobic? then how can he be Mr. Right...must be the challenge thing working its magic

 

[Moonbear]

I'm convinced that my most romantic moment won't make a lick of sense to anyone, so that's why I haven't shared it yet (maybe I will anyway when I have little time to stay put at my desk rather than running back and forth into the lab).

Then again, I'm still waiting to get swept off my feet with a better romantic moment.

 

[The_Professional]

Then again, I'm still waiting to get swept off my feet with a better romantic moment.

Do you like scary movies?

 

[Moonbear]

Do you like scary movies?

Yeah, why?

 

[franznietzsche]

someone wise once imparted this sentence on me and I've generally found it to be true:

As soon as you stop looking for love, love will find you.

IOW, being comfortable with yourself and not "needing a relationship" is a powerful aphrodisiac. Of course some of you will say this is utter BS- if so, can't help you

Its not utter BS, you're just oversimplifying it.

For example, i stopped looking for love a while ago. And i really have no need for a relationship. But combine a zero tolerance policy for emo BS involved in every relationship with an emotionally immature person (read: human being) and a love for computer work almost 24/7 and there's not much help that can be had.

 

[Math Is Hard]

I had my first kiss when I was 13. I was in the basement of one of my friends after school. On his stereo there was a song playing by a band called the Corgis, "Everyone's got to learn sometime". And that's when I learned what a kiss was like, and how sweet and soft it could be.
That was the most amazing, fantastic kiss of my life.

 

[Bladibla]

someone wise once imparted this sentence on me and I've generally found it to be true:

As soon as you stop looking for love, love will find you.

IOW, being comfortable with yourself and not "needing a relationship" is a powerful aphrodisiac. Of course some of you will say this is utter BS- if so, can't help you

I disagree. I stopped, and i didn't get one.

Although i don't want one anyway..

 

[Mk]

My most romantic moment.

This was my most romantic moment, but don't read it - I don't want anyone to know about it:

As I rounded the corner and began to approach my house, on my way home from the First National Bank - where I worked, I noticed a very old man on a tricycle. Based on looking at him, one would think that the country’s last Civil War Veteran was out for a joyride, and the hospital was searching in full fleet trying to find him and put him back on life support. As I was checking the mailbox he stopped and asked me a question.
“Excuse me,” he managed out of his dry, tired throat. His eyes looked older than his body; his haggard face looked like the leather on a pair of old cowboy boots. “Where is Sheryl Drive?”
I recognized the street name immediately; it was in the adjacent neighborhood.
“Well sir, if you go out of the subdivision and take a left, it is the very next neighborhood,” I instructed while pointing and indicating where he should go.
“Thank you.”
The frail man continued on his tricycle down the street. I grabbed the mail and continued on up my driveway into the house. Thoughts of the old man wouldn’t leave my mind. ‘What if he doesn’t get back?’ ‘What if he goes the wrong way?’ ‘What if he simultaneously has a seizure, stroke and heart attack after getting hit by a semi-truck while riding?’
With that entire process racing through my mind, my conscience hit me in the head with a baseball bat. I went back out to check on his progress. Sure enough, he had continued going around my neighborhood. I jogged across the block to him.
“Sir, you said you wanted to get to Sheryl Drive?” I asked once I had reached him.
He stopped and looked up at me. “Yes, I have gotten there?”
That was when I figured he’d need more than directions.
“Not quite. I can take you there if you’d like,” I implored.
“Please, I’m lost,” he told me again as if it was the first time. “I just wanted to get a little bit of exercise and now I don’t know where to go.”
It doesn’t take very long to get to where he needed to be. What was also nice was the fact that it was, quite possibly the most beautiful day in the history of Florida. I had nothing to do, and he had a desperate need of someone at the time. We got back to the front of the neighborhood, and as I told him to go left he veered into the road.
“Sir, it would be a lot easier on the sidewalk,” I blurted out as I grabbed the handle bar and guided him onto the gray pavement.
“Oh, it is. Thank you.” The man seemed to be senile. As he looked at the bank across the street, he asked if it was where I went to school. I told him it was, and he began to explain that he had grown up and gone to school in Wisconsin, and it was much colder there.
“The University of Wisconsin?” I asked him. He replied robotically as if he had told it a hundred times. “ No, I went up to 8th grade, it was all we could afford.”
"I though school was free back then too."
"It was," he muttered.

Once we got farther down the sidewalk I asked a little more about him. He explained that he worked in a factory for most of his life and he inhaled to many gas fumes. This resulted in him requiring 18 hours of oxygen every day. That really began to paint the picture of the situation: he should not have been outside exercising. I began to thank the city for putting the two subdivisions so close together.
We came to the entrance of his neighborhood, and turned inside.
“I live at 17…1712. I have a white station wagon but Dr. Johnson won’t let me drive it anymore,” he mumbled to me. The man peddled on into the neighborhood as more and more I realized how important it was to find his house. Once again, he and I were lucky. We got to his house quickly because it was the 3rd on the right. I flinched as he slowly got off of his tricycle, as if to catch him. He stood up and shook my hand.
“Thank you young man. Without you, I would have never made it home.” I believed him. He slowly put one foot in front of the other until he slid through the doorway into his house.
As I strode home, I shuddered off the thoughts of what could have happened to him had I not gone back out to check on him. My conscience smiled discreetly and kissed that bat. In my mind I kissed it too. I hoped the man hadn’t over-exerted himself. Knowing no idea how long he had been riding, I had no real gauge of his fatigue other than his appearance. Despite these things he was home, back where he belonged. I got back to mine. It seemed so stereotypical; like helping a lady cross the street or picking up dropped change. But it was enough for me. It was enough to make the day seem worthwhile. Tuesday laughed quietly in the wind.

 

[hypatia]

That was truly beautiful Mk.

 

[Artman]

I have a couple.

One night my wife and I danced to "our song" in our living room. :!)

I am a very slow mover, I'm not very good at reading whether a person likes me or not. One day, in high school, I was looking for a teacher and I went into his office. He wasn't there, but there was a girl that I thought was cute, but a few years younger than me, coming out, so I asked her if she had seen him. She said, "No." And although she could walk right by me and leave the room, she went around a bunch of stacked chairs and slipped out behind me. I thought, good grief, she can't stand me.

Turns out that she ran down the hall and said, "He talked to me, he talked to me!" to her friends. One of her friends was dating my best friend and she told him that I should ask her friend to the prom. I did. And to make a long story short, several years ago we danced to "our song" in our living room. :!)

 

[Huckleberry]

I have a couple.

One night my wife and I danced to "our song" in our living room. :!)

I am a very slow mover, I'm not very good at reading whether a person likes me or not. One day, in high school, I was looking for a teacher and I went into his office. He wasn't there, but there was a girl that I thought was cute, but a few years younger than me, coming out, so I asked her if she had seen him. She said, "No." And although she could walk right by me and leave the room, she went around a bunch of stacked chairs and slipped out behind me. I thought, good grief, she can't stand me.

Turns out that she ran down the hall and said, "He talked to me, he talked to me!" to her friends. One of her friends was dating my best friend and she told him that I should ask her friend to the prom. I did. And to make a long story short, several years ago we danced to "our song" in our living room. :!)

IACPWTWINWUMW
What did she see in you? Couldn't have been the sense of humor.

That's beautiful Artman. We should all be so fortunate.

 

[BobG]

I didn't even know my wife in high school even though we went to the same high school. She did know my sister, though. They were supposed to go to the library to work on a project, but wound up sitting up in my sister's room goofing off. Since they were supposed to be at the library, my future wife decided she'd better take a book home to cover her tracks. She took our 'M' encyclopedia, since that was the first letter of her name.

She never brought the book back!

A couple of years after I graduated, my parents moved to Louisiana. I started dating my wife a couple of years after that.

First time we visited my parents house after we were married, my wife remembered the encyclocpedia and realized she still had it in a box of her stuff at her Mom's house. She decided to bring it along with us. Sure enough, the encyclopedias were sitting in their book shelf, with a gap where the 'M' encyclopedia should be. We slipped the missing 'M' into place when no one was in the room, making the set complete again.

Sometimes, a complete set of encyclopedias is kind of romantic.

 

[Artman]

IACPWTWINWUMW
What did she see in you? Couldn't have been the sense of humor.

That's beautiful Artman. We should all be so fortunate.

I am a lucky guy. She is a sweetie. By the way, Sunday is our 23rd anniversary.

 

[Danger]

Sunday is our 23rd anniversary.

Okay guys... let's get those party smilies ready to rock the house down!

 

[Artman]

Okay guys... let's get those party smilies ready to rock the house down!

Part-tay!

 

[Astronuc]

I am a lucky guy. She is a sweetie. By the way, Sunday is our 23rd anniversary.

Artman, Congratulations!
I am exactly 2 weeks behind you - 23 years also.

 

[Artman]

Artman, Congratulations!
I am exactly 2 weeks behind you - 23 years also.

Congrats in advance. I don't know about you, but I'm lucky she's put up with me for that long.

 

[Astronuc]

I don't know about you, but I'm lucky she's put up with me for that long.

Yeah - same here. She married me despite my looks. I guess it was my personality.

 

[Huckleberry]

I am a lucky guy. She is a sweetie. By the way, Sunday is our 23rd anniversary.

I am exactly 2 weeks behind you - 23 years also.

Congratulations to both of you. 23 years of marriage is quite an acheivement.

 

[hypatia]

Back in the early 70's we had 3 day music festivals every month during the summer. One I went to was called the Grass Lake music bash. The guy I went with overdosed the first night, so they took him off to the hospital. Leaving me by myself without food, clean cloths or money{which was locked in his car}.
I was hungry and being eaten alive with mosquitos, when I met his guy, and we started talking...after a bit he told me to stay put and he would be back. When he came back he had corn{oddly still on the stalk}, some tomatos and other food.
So we ate under the stars with Papa John Creech/Jefferson Airplane playing in the back ground. I woke up in his arms, and a few months later we moved in together. A few years later we were married, together 24 years in all.

We're not together anymore..but life is still good.

 

[The Rev]

One moonlit night (the night of October 16, 1843 to be precise), as William Rowan Hamilton took a romantic stroll with his wife over the Brougham Bridge in Dublin, Ireland, the fundamental relationship of quaternion multiplication came to him in a flash of genius
($$i^2=j^2=k^2=ijk=-1$$). Hamilton was so moved by the emotion of the moment, he carved the equation into one of the stones on the Brougham Bridge.

Unfortunately, the romantic conversation that led up to Hamilton's flash of genius has never been recorded, but I'm sure watching Hamilton carve a mathematical equation into a stone had to leave his wife deeply moved.

What's your most memorable romantic moment?

I'm kinda thinking he didn't get any that night, tho. And what good is genius if it doesn't impress the opposite sex?



The Rev

 

[Moonbear]

Congrats to Artman and Astronuc! That's wonderful to know there are still happy marriages in this world.

I wish my romantic tales had a long happy marriage at the end of them. Perhaps some day.

Okay, I'll tell my tale, but don't be too disappointed if it pales in comparison to some of the others here...mine didn't end in a happy marriage.

It started out at the rehearsal dinner for a friend's wedding. I was the maid of honor, he was the best man, and we'd never met before. He's one of those guys who looks much older than he is, so when I first was introduced, I thought to myself, "great, I've been paired up with some 40 yr old." It started out like a rather normal event. They took our dinner orders, and I ordered the prime rib, rare. He commented, "A woman after my own heart," as he ordered the same meal. Other than that, we seemed like complete opposites, right down to our attire. I was wearing an off-white dress and he was dressed all in black. At some point, someone commented on the humvee we all noticed parked outside the hotel. We have no idea why it was there, but it became the joke of the evening that it was the "get-away vehicle." The groomsmen all donned their napkins over their faces like bandits wearing bandanas and staged a kidnapping of the groom, to which the bridesmaids (led by me) took up our steak knives to bar their escape. I ended up in a mock duel with the best man that ended with me grabbing him from behind and holding the knife to his heart. This was all just play. At some point, I had learned he wasn't really 40, we were the same age, so he was no longer this "old guy," but someone eligible (this was a while ago...40 isn't old anymore). There was a lot more joking around, and then after dinner, the parents and other relatives headed off to bed leaving us young 'uns to continue partying. We headed off to the hotel bar. Nothing too notable happened until he started feeding the other women cherries (yes, it meant what you think it means). I was left out and had begun convincing myself that he didn't even like me enough to include me in his play. Then I don't even know how it happened, but it seemed like everyone else suddenly got tired and headed for their rooms, leaving just the two of us behind. He was waiting to pay the bar tab, and I was drinking water, trying to rehydrate before heading to bed. He got some water too, and we sat there talking and drinking our water until the bar closed and they told us we had to leave. At this point, I was really falling for this guy and really wasn't ready to go to sleep yet (I was still pretty drunk). After agreeing neither of us was ready to go to sleep, we decided to go for a walk, except there was really no place to walk to. The hotel we were staying at wasn't near anything except a convention center, and it was surrounded by nothing but parking lots. So, we just walked in circles around the hotel...I wasn't very steady on my feet, so he was holding me close, and it just felt really right. After a few circles around the hotel, we decided we should sit down somewhere, and found a set of steps to sit on. I snuggled closer and put my head on his shoulder and decided I would be content to stay there forever and told him so. I admitted I didn't think he liked me earlier in the evening and he laughed that he thought I was giving him the cold shoulder. So, after a while of sitting outside in the summer evening, we finally decided it was time to head back in and get some sleep for the few hours we had until we needed to start getting ready for the wedding. He invited me back to his room, but having just met him, I declined (I know, some of you will be so disappointed to learn I'm not that type of gal). I was sharing a room with the other bridesmaids on a lower floor than his room, so I got off the elevator first and headed to my room. And don't you just hate when those swipe cards in hotel doors don't work?! So, I was standing out in the hallway of the hotel, it was some ridiculously late hour of the night or early hour of the morning, and my key wasn't working, and I was trying to decide whether they had locked the door from the inside that I needed to knock and wake everyone up to get in, or if I just needed to go to the front desk and get the key re-swiped. I ended up literally just sitting on the floor in the hallway for a moment to figure this out (between all the drinking and the late hour, this required a lot of effort to decide), when the door to the stairwell at the end of the hallway burst open and the guy I had just met came running out, out of breath. He seemed as surprised to see me still in the hallway as I was to see him reappear when I thought he had gone up to sleep. He explained, he had forgotten to ask if he could get a kiss goodnight. He didn't think I'd still be in the hallway, but he had to try. Then, when he realized I had been sitting on the floor when he entered the hallway, he asked what was going on, so I explained my key wasn't working, and he just showed up, and it must be fate. We went up to his room together. Though, to his great disappointment, I really wanted to go to sleep. He was the perfect gentleman. I only had with me the clothes I had on, so slept in those, and out of deference to me, he offered to let me have the bed and he would sleep on the sofa in the room. I felt way too guilty to let him sleep on the sofa when it was HIS room, so I pointed out there was more than enough room on the bed for two. Since I stayed in my clothes, he slept in his clothes too (I hadn't asked that of him). I think we did end up cuddling a bit that night, but that was it. I was so amazingly smitten, and he did everything just right. Later that morning, the alarm went off way too early. We got breakfast and then I headed back to the room with the rest of the bridesmaids to get ready for the wedding. I was so horribly hung over and dead tired from too little sleep. I didn't see him again until the ceremony. He was so handsome in his tux! Anyway, fast forward through the ceremony to the reception. We do all the required introductions, speeches, first dances, etc., and then he disappears for a little while and I was wondering what was going on. When he finally returned, he handed me the first gift he ever got me...a packet of aspirin! I hadn't said a word about how horribly I was feeling after the previous night's partying, but he had noticed and went out hunting for aspirin for me. It was the sweetest thing anyone had ever done for me. We dated for a long time after that.

(At some point, he admitted that the first night we spent together was the most miserable night of his life. It was apparently quite an effort to remain a gentleman when he had every urge not to be, but then I reminded him that if he hadn't been a perfect gentleman, I wouldn't have stayed.)

So, no, it doesn't involve any of the things I always thought a romantic moment would involve...no walks on moonlit beaches, just walks in circles around parking lots; no roses or chocolates, just aspirin. Maybe it's because it wasn't anything like what I expected romance to be that made it so special.

Unfortunately, a few years later, he dumped me for someone else...I'd have kept him forever.

 

[Bladibla]

Congrats to Artman and Astronuc! That's wonderful to know there are still happy marriages in this world.

I wish my romantic tales had a long happy marriage at the end of them. Perhaps some day.

Okay, I'll tell my tale, but don't be too disappointed if it pales in comparison to some of the others here...mine didn't end in a happy marriage.

It started out at the rehearsal dinner for a friend's wedding. I was the maid of honor, he was the best man, and we'd never met before. He's one of those guys who looks much older than he is, so when I first was introduced, I thought to myself, "great, I've been paired up with some 40 yr old." It started out like a rather normal event. They took our dinner orders, and I ordered the prime rib, rare. He commented, "A woman after my own heart," as he ordered the same meal. Other than that, we seemed like complete opposites, right down to our attire. I was wearing an off-white dress and he was dressed all in black. At some point, someone commented on the humvee we all noticed parked outside the hotel. We have no idea why it was there, but it became the joke of the evening that it was the "get-away vehicle." The groomsmen all donned their napkins over their faces like bandits wearing bandanas and staged a kidnapping of the groom, to which the bridesmaids (led by me) took up our steak knives to bar their escape. I ended up in a mock duel with the best man that ended with me grabbing him from behind and holding the knife to his heart. This was all just play. At some point, I had learned he wasn't really 40, we were the same age, so he was no longer this "old guy," but someone eligible (this was a while ago...40 isn't old anymore). There was a lot more joking around, and then after dinner, the parents and other relatives headed off to bed leaving us young 'uns to continue partying. We headed off to the hotel bar. Nothing too notable happened until he started feeding the other women cherries (yes, it meant what you think it means). I was left out and had begun convincing myself that he didn't even like me enough to include me in his play. Then I don't even know how it happened, but it seemed like everyone else suddenly got tired and headed for their rooms, leaving just the two of us behind. He was waiting to pay the bar tab, and I was drinking water, trying to rehydrate before heading to bed. He got some water too, and we sat there talking and drinking our water until the bar closed and they told us we had to leave. At this point, I was really falling for this guy and really wasn't ready to go to sleep yet (I was still pretty drunk). After agreeing neither of us was ready to go to sleep, we decided to go for a walk, except there was really no place to walk to. The hotel we were staying at wasn't near anything except a convention center, and it was surrounded by nothing but parking lots. So, we just walked in circles around the hotel...I wasn't very steady on my feet, so he was holding me close, and it just felt really right. After a few circles around the hotel, we decided we should sit down somewhere, and found a set of steps to sit on. I snuggled closer and put my head on his shoulder and decided I would be content to stay there forever and told him so. I admitted I didn't think he liked me earlier in the evening and he laughed that he thought I was giving him the cold shoulder. So, after a while of sitting outside in the summer evening, we finally decided it was time to head back in and get some sleep for the few hours we had until we needed to start getting ready for the wedding. He invited me back to his room, but having just met him, I declined (I know, some of you will be so disappointed to learn I'm not that type of gal). I was sharing a room with the other bridesmaids on a lower floor than his room, so I got off the elevator first and headed to my room. And don't you just hate when those swipe cards in hotel doors don't work?! So, I was standing out in the hallway of the hotel, it was some ridiculously late hour of the night or early hour of the morning, and my key wasn't working, and I was trying to decide whether they had locked the door from the inside that I needed to knock and wake everyone up to get in, or if I just needed to go to the front desk and get the key re-swiped. I ended up literally just sitting on the floor in the hallway for a moment to figure this out (between all the drinking and the late hour, this required a lot of effort to decide), when the door to the stairwell at the end of the hallway burst open and the guy I had just met came running out, out of breath. He seemed as surprised to see me still in the hallway as I was to see him reappear when I thought he had gone up to sleep. He explained, he had forgotten to ask if he could get a kiss goodnight. He didn't think I'd still be in the hallway, but he had to try. Then, when he realized I had been sitting on the floor when he entered the hallway, he asked what was going on, so I explained my key wasn't working, and he just showed up, and it must be fate. We went up to his room together. Though, to his great disappointment, I really wanted to go to sleep. He was the perfect gentleman. I only had with me the clothes I had on, so slept in those, and out of deference to me, he offered to let me have the bed and he would sleep on the sofa in the room. I felt way too guilty to let him sleep on the sofa when it was HIS room, so I pointed out there was more than enough room on the bed for two. Since I stayed in my clothes, he slept in his clothes too (I hadn't asked that of him). I think we did end up cuddling a bit that night, but that was it. I was so amazingly smitten, and he did everything just right. Later that morning, the alarm went off way too early. We got breakfast and then I headed back to the room with the rest of the bridesmaids to get ready for the wedding. I was so horribly hung over and dead tired from too little sleep. I didn't see him again until the ceremony. He was so handsome in his tux! Anyway, fast forward through the ceremony to the reception. We do all the required introductions, speeches, first dances, etc., and then he disappears for a little while and I was wondering what was going on. When he finally returned, he handed me the first gift he ever got me...a packet of aspirin! I hadn't said a word about how horribly I was feeling after the previous night's partying, but he had noticed and went out hunting for aspirin for me. It was the sweetest thing anyone had ever done for me. We dated for a long time after that.

(At some point, he admitted that the first night we spent together was the most miserable night of his life. It was apparently quite an effort to remain a gentleman when he had every urge not to be, but then I reminded him that if he hadn't been a perfect gentleman, I wouldn't have stayed.)

So, no, it doesn't involve any of the things I always thought a romantic moment would involve...no walks on moonlit beaches, just walks in circles around parking lots; no roses or chocolates, just aspirin. Maybe it's because it wasn't anything like what I expected romance to be that made it so special.

Unfortunately, a few years later, he dumped me for someone else...I'd have kept him forever.

You shouldn't underestimate yourself too much..that was a heart-warming story.

Shame it didn't end happy on the long term

 

[Astronuc]

Okay, I'll tell my tale, but don't be too disappointed if it pales in comparison to some of the others here...mine didn't end in a happy marriage.

Unfortunately, a few years later, he dumped me for someone else...I'd have kept him forever.

Very touching story, and heart-warming as Bladibla mentioned. Well that guy lost out big-time!

 

[Artman]

Congrats to Artman and Astronuc! That's wonderful to know there are still happy marriages in this world...

Thank you.

...So, no, it doesn't involve any of the things I always thought a romantic moment would involve...no walks on moonlit beaches, just walks in circles around parking lots; no roses or chocolates, just aspirin. Maybe it's because it wasn't anything like what I expected romance to be that made it so special.

Your Story reminded me of the movie, "It Happened One Night." I find it very romantic, and I respect your decision to keep him waiting.

 

[Monique]

Sweet story moonbear :)

My story is that I got invited to a party by a good friend, but it got postponed and then I didn't hear anything about it anymore. Then this guy I had only met once, 6 months before at a party, sends a message if I'd like to come with him to that party (we had kept in contact through the internet). So the idea was that everyone had to bring along a date. That weekend he comes to pick me up in his car and we drive to the party and I tell him what has been going on with me and how I was planning to go back to the US, to which he replied: that's a pity, which I thought was sweet :)

We shared a lot of interests and talked all night and played some piano. That evening I told him we should meet again. It happened sooner than thought, the guy who had originally invited me asked if I wanted to come along to the beach. I asked who else was coming along, my previous date was.. after verifying whether he really was coming, I went along ;) The three of us went out to the beach and sat down in the sand and watched the stars (it was friday evening) and talked and laughed a bunch. All the while I was thinking how I could get closer to the one guy, without the other one noticing it.. I was sitting in the middle so that was kinda hard :| After coming home we arranged to meet that weekend.

So that weekend he teaches me a song on the piano (fading like a flower by roxette). Later we drive over to the lake and stop at a spot, he explained he used to spend a lot of time at sitting and thinking. So we walk down to the water front and sit down on a stone. After talking for a while he starts talking from the heart, how he's been liking me for a while already. It was so sweet :!) while driving home we saw the sun going down, so we drove to the sea to sit at the beach and watched it

Many trips followed and he still is sweet as ever. Today his cheeks looked rosy, which I commented on. He asked whether I had ever noticed him blushing when I just met him, which I hadn't.. he commented that he must've seemed more self-assured than he really was. He had been thinking of me since that very first party and remixed an Indian love song during that time (which I had given him). Ah, I'm going to cry now, isn't that sweet?