Road to Dating Part 2: Creepy C

So I blogged about the night we met here.  Today, I will share our journey of what came next, and believe me, it was quite a long BUMPY ride.

So if you refer to my previous post, you will remember that Crawford and I only said one word to each other the first night we met.  A couple of nights later, I noticed that he added my roommate Alyssa on Facebook.  Being the social media guru that I am, I thought to myself, "maybe I should add him, what's another friend."  (Side note: I was bad for adding people I did not really know).  He accepted my friend request right away and IMMEDIATELY sent me a facebook chat.

Crawfords version of the story is that he added Alyssa to see if I would notice so that way I would friend request him first.  It is so funny to hear him tell this part because the night I added him, he literally did a "dance" in his dorm room in front of 3 of his closest guy friends.  He pretty much assumed this was putting him on the fast track to dating. NOT!

Fast forward the story (I don't want to bore you).  We chatted pretty much off and on for a week or two.  I found that he was really easy to talk to and not like any guy I had ever met.  I am not even kidding you, I thought he tried too hard in the beginning and tried using every pick up line known to man.  He would type out these long paragraphs that were extremely deep in thought and I would just sit at my computer and laugh.  Little did I know, that is just how his mind works 99% of the time.

I had to go home one day to get a new phone and Crawford asked if he could ride with me.  Looking back on it, I was probably insane to let him ride with me.  It was our first time actually "hanging" out and I had only known the boy for about 2 weeks.  Regardless, I did not want to ride by myself to Wilson and thought that this would be a great time to hang out with a new friend.

So off we went to Wilson.  Crawford was wearing his famous outfit that day: gym shorts, tank top, calf high socks, and Nike flip flops.  Little did I know that we would end up meeting my parents, hanging out with them in a phone store for a solid hour, and then going on a nice little double date family dinner together at  Texas Steakhouse.  Yeah, he didn't make the best "first impression" on my parents.  They still joke him about that to this day.  In his defense, I did not realize we were meeting them that night.  Plus, we were just friends that rode together, right?

School got out the next week so I moved back home for the summer and started an internship at a church in Clayton.  We skyped every single night.  I found him so incredibly easy to talk to...not to mention, it was nice having a guy interested in me.  I knew he was not my "type" AT ALL so I only looked at those Skype dates  chats as talking to my best friend at the end of every day.  I honestly love that we did that because that is where our friendship started.  We told each other everything that summer.  He truly became my best friend. 

I eventually started having friends ask me what was going on with us.  Let's just say, this is where I started to deny everything and this is what caused most of his friends NOT to like me.  When talking with my friends, I would act as if Crawford was a guy that would not leave me alone.  I know, IM TERRIBLE.  I told them that we were friends but he wanted to pursue me and I was not interested. My friends ended up giving him the name "Creepy C" and it haunts him to this day.  HE HATES IT! I mean, I can understand why but this is all part of our story.

Crawford's freshman year was a pretty dark year for him but I fully believe that it made him who he is today.  He grew up a lot like me, very involved in church.  When he got to college, lets just say he started to make some choices that led him down the wrong path.  When we met, I could tell that he was in search of something different but had not quite figured out the proper balance of college/studying/friends/partying.

 In July, I was busy with summer camps and missions trips and so we eventually stopped talking.  It was during that time that he started dating/seeing/whatever you want to call it, a girl from back home.  We didn't talk for the rest of the summer and he eventually started back partying pretty heavily.

And this is where part 2 ends.

Road to Dating Part 1: The Tennessee Shirt

The road to dating was definitely not an easy one for us.  For me, it was just needing time to figure things out and for Crawford, it was a pretty agonizing process.  The night we met, dating was probably one of the furthest things from my mind.  I had been freshly single for about a year and was just not ready to dive back in to the dating scene since my only/first/serious relationship lasted nearly 3 years. Yeah, you read that right. 3 years!  I was pursuing God's plan for my life and dating just was not part of that mix.

It was Crawford's freshman year of college, my sophomore.  Sophomore year for me was THE. BEST. YEAR.  Now, don't get me wrong, every year was pretty dang good but that year was just my blessing in disguise.  I was somewhat depressed and God provided exactly what I needed.

Meet the girls that quickly became my blessing.  My bestfriends.  Two of my bridesmaids.  I knew Alyssa from Wilson, I met Alex the year before through choir, and Anna was assigned to live with us because we needed a 4th roommate.  Chance God brought us together that year.  All 4 of us were going through different things and we just hit it off in a way that words cannot really describe.  

Now, lets fast forward to the spring of that year (2010).  Alex had cornhole boards that quickly became our nightly entertainment because 1. What else is there to do in Mount Olive and 2. What else is there to do in Mount Olive?  Can I get an AMEN?

Crawford and I met on April 12th, 2010.  You're probably thinking, "Wow, what an amazing memory" right?  No. This picture was taken on that night and luckily my camera date stamped the picture.  Crawford can tell you exactly what I was wearing.  Tennessee t-shirt (this was a gift because I am a Duke fan- GO DEVILS), jean skirt, and my hair was crinkled.  It was a typical night for Alex and I- cornhole with friends.  

*Enter Crawford and Larry*

Larry is one my good friends and is a groomsmen.  Crawford had recently broken up with a girl so Larry was trying to introduce him to more people on campus.  All I remember about Crawford from that night was that he was wearing gym shorts, a tank top with a jacket, a hat that was backwards, calf-high Nike socks, and Nike flip flops.  Let's just say, not my cup of tea.  I don't think we even spoke that night other than saying "hi."  Apparently, that's all it took for Crawford.  He asked Larry who I was and Larry told him my name but pretty much told him to stop thinking because it wasn't going to happen.  Remember, I told you I wasn't ready to date and all my friends pretty much knew that.  Somehow, without even uttering a word other than "hi," Crawford knew that night, on April 12th, that I was the one he would marry.  He told Larry that night he would marry "that girl one day."  As you can imagine, Larry just rolled his eyes while thinking "this guy is insane."  

And that is pretty much how it started.  Cornhole. Gym Shorts. Tennessee T-shirt. And the word "hi."