"What do you want to do with Woo?"
Woo is what we call the old desktop because when it is straining to run some programs the fan howls and squeals. Woooooooo. To be fair, I've had that desktop for about seven years and it has only 512MB of RAM. You can imagine how difficult it was to run anything lately. Upgrading to Windows Vista or 7? Forget it. I couldn't even install the latest Windows Office on the darn thing.
That's why last semester I took some of my financial aid moneys and purchased a laptop. I never really turned old Woo back on again after I got used to my laptop and installed the printer drivers correctly.
"I don't know... I guess we can get rid of it. I never really use it now that I have the laptop. I guess there's nothing really important on there."
If something catastrophic had happened and the hard drive got wiped it wouldn't be the end of the world, in other words. On the other hand, there was 7 years worth of CDs I had ripped onto it. Not a whole lot, but some of those CDs have been MIA for a few years. Not only that but there were quite a few pictures, some of them stretching back to right around when Ben and I started dating.
"Well..." I offered up the idea of getting an external hard-drive to pull the files off old Woo. He said that sounded good.
I guess I thought there would be tons of files on there since I had had it for seven years, but the sad truth is there really wasn't very much. About 1,000 songs and about a hundred photos. I went through some of the projects I had worked on in the first three years of pharmacy school, but nothing seemed very relevant to take with me on rotations.
Evidence that I am not exactly tech-savvy I suppose. I use my computer for the most basic of tasks that computers have been able to do for probably 10-20 years: word processing, e-mail, internet surfing and stuff for school and that's about it. Still, it was a little disappointing that the last seven years of my life barely took up 6 GBs on the external hard-drive.
I guess I have to be honest with myself that maybe I just wanted to see what an external hard-drive was and how it worked.
At any rate, I got to flip through some of the photos that I hadn't seen in a while. Perhaps it's because Ben is gone in Dallas that I feel a little nostalgic for our story.
Prologue
I was born in Irving, TX, a city smack-dab in the middle of Dallas and Ft. Worth. I'm a life-long Texan even though both of my parents are from other states. My dad from California and my mom from Hawaii and then later, California. I am an only child who has lived most of my life in Coppell, a suburb northwest of Dallas.
Ben was born in Normal, Illinois and both of his parents are also from Illinois. He is Midwestern through and through. He has a brother and a sister and has lived in Illinois and Nevada before moving to Coppell sometime during the end of elementary school or beginning of middle school. You couldn't find someone more of an opposite to me.
Somehow, through some twist of fate (more like fate slamming us into each other repeatedly), we ended up together.
Chapter One: Coppell, TX
For it's first act, fate tried to bring us together when Ben's family moved to Coppell for his father's work. We went to the same middle school, Coppell Middle School West, for the first couple years but we didn't know each other then. It is so strange to think that we were passing each other in the halls as far back as sixth grade. We may have even had a couple classes together.
What really is interesting to me is that I probably would have known him sooner if I had gotten the courage to ask my parents if I could join band. At the time I thought you had to purchase the instrument you played and we didn't have much money back then. That's the price of living in an upper-middle class town for the schools even though you weren't upper-middle class. I didn't know you could rent instruments those first couple of years. Ben started his trombone playing career in middle school, I started my theater career. Theater was close to free, after all.
After they opened the third middle school in Coppell, CMS North, that's where Ben went for eight grade while I stayed at West.
Fate tried to bring us together yet again in two ways. There was only one high school in Coppell, TX and there also weren't very many places a teenager could employ themselves. When my parents agreed to get a car for me, part of the agreement was that I get a job and help pay for it.
I got a job at the local Tom Thumb (Randall's for you Houstonians) as a Front End cashier/bagger on the weekends. I didn't complain much so they put me on the express lane all the time, which for some reason people didn't like to work. On the express lane, since there aren't many items, you don't usually get a bagger.
I guess that's why it took me so long to become acquainted with Ben, who was also working at Tom Thumb as a bagger. He could have been a cashier, but because that meant you didn't get to run amok and go out to the parking lot to screw around, he didn't usually volunteer to work the registers.
When he did come up to my lane, he usually didn't say a word. He bagged, and then left-- usually in the direction of the parking lot.
It wasn't until junior year that I officially met Benjamin Phillips. It happened nearly simultaneously at Tom Thumb and in high school.
I was acquainted with some mutual friends of ours, Derek and Andy, who were in band with Ben. We were in Gifted and Talented English together. Ben had been in regular english, but he heard how much fun we had in GT English so he joined us one semester.
Right from the beginning I thought he was hilarious. When we studied Beowulf in English (actually, we studied it twice thanks to a change of curriculum half-way through our tenure) we had to write our own epic poems and read them aloud to the class. Ben's was titled BeoBush.
BeoBush was, of course, a parody of George W. Bush. I will never forget how BeoBush searched for the Dragons of Mass Destruction (DMDs) but could not find them. Then there was the Shakespeare 'They Got What They Deserved' project. Derek, Andy, Ben, me, and a couple other people were in a group and we chose to do a video project. I remember Ben messing up one of his lines and calling Macbeth 'Hamlet' by mistake. His comedic timing was perfect if not unintentional. We left the botched line in the final cut.
We also had a chase scene in our project. To add to the slapstick humor, we threw a gigantic stuffed dog in the back of Ben's "DangerRanger" ('96 Ford Ranger). I filmed from the bed of his truck as he and Andy's stationwagon hauled ass down the Coppell streets, trying to get good shots AND dialogue while not getting thrown out of his truck.
In the meantime, I was working a non-express lane one day and Ben noticed I had a Dallas Stars sticker on my name tag. Turns out, we were both huge hockey fans. That was probably the beginning of our true bonding.
From the beginning we referred to each other as our "hockey-buddy". It was cool working at the Coppell grocery store back then, because a lot of the Stars actually lived in Coppell and we got to see them when they came in to get groceries. One day my mom was visiting during my lunch break when our then stellar super-star goalie Marty Turco walked in the produce section near the deli I was taking my break in.
I quickly hustled toward where Ben was bagging groceries and told him. He casually snuck over to the produce section and confirmed my story.
"Wouldn't it be crazy if he came through your line?" Ben said. I told him I'd probably freak out.
My lunch break was nearly over, and sure enough, when I got back on my lane who else but Marty Turco starts to unload his groceries on my belt. I was nearly speechless. Of course I had to do the required, "Hello! How are you? Did you find everything you needed today?" Yada yada.
Of course he was just a nice, normal person. He even bagged his own groceries. But as soon as he was pushing his cart away Ben came rushing up to me. We both had a 'moment' of fan hysteria before we had to get back to work.
Time went on and we maintained a good rapport at work, talking about hockey and school. Then on my birthday I was working and Ben came up to me, again while I was on break and handed me a game puck. He thought I'd like it since I was such a big hockey fan. I was so shocked that he had thought of me that all I could say to him was, "I hate when people surprise me. I hate when people give me gifts."
He still remembers how flustered I was and I still have that hockey puck.
We went to a Texas Tornado game (a junior league hockey team that plays in Frisco) together a couple times, but there wasn't much more to it than that. We were just hockey buddies.
We both graduated from Coppell Senior High School in 2004 and went our separate ways. Ben got a scholarship to play trombone for the Razorback band at University of Arkansas, and I was already trying to get into pharmacy school. In order to save my parents some money, I wanted to stay close to home and was going to attend the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA).
We had ignored fate up until then. Middle school, high school, the same grocery store, hockey. It's funny how what you're looking for is always right in your face.
Chapter 2: Arlington
As it turns out, Ben and I had yet another mutual friend from high school, Eileen. My second year I decided that commuting between Coppell and Arlington was not for me, so I somehow convinced my frugal dad to let me get a dorm room. It also just so happened that one of the roommates in Eileen's suite was moving out.
That summer, an instant message from Ben popped up on Woo's computer screen. He told me he was thinking about attending UTA that fall semester since he hadn't done so well as an engineering major at Arkansas. I told him I liked it, especially now that I was going to be living on-campus.
He was going to be living on campus too, he said. In a dorm right down the street from mine.
"I'll help you get acquainted with the school. We can hang out and watch Stars games together!" I told him.
Fate brought Ben back from Arkansas to the same college I was attending, to the same street I was now living on, and back into my life. At first, it was my roommate who was always hanging out with him. She was an undeclared art major, and she needed subjects for her photography.
Ben made a great subject. He was very dynamic and expressive. If you knew him well, you know that you rarely get a straight face out of him.
We hung out quite a bit. We looked forward to those days when the Stars were playing so we could all gather round my tiny 25" TV in the living area of the suite and watch the game. We got shushed by the RA on more than one occasion.
At the time I was 'seeing' a guy I had met that played soccer and unfortunately Ben was my confidant. That probably made for some really awkward moments for him. I should have known, though, because when I went to that guy's soccer practice/matches and brought Ben, I would have more fun playing badminton on the sidelines with him than watching the game. At least that guy was honest with me fairly quickly and told me that he didn't want a serious relationship. Whatever it was ended pretty quickly after that.
One day, a few weeks later, my friend Eileen was showing me some pictures she had taken of Ben with her digital camera. They had driven out to a lake and they were taken in black and white. Ben was in a button down shirt, his hands in his pockets looking off in the distance, and I swear to God he looked like a Ralph Lauren model.
I think right then and there I finally saw how good looking he was. It was right there the whole time, staring me in the face, but it wasn't until I saw him through the lens of the camera that it dawned on me.
I loved hanging out with him, he loved hockey, we had easy conversation.
"Oh my God, Eileen. I think I like him. I think I really really like him."
Of course I didn't tell him right away. We still hung out and I kept it to myself. I was terrified that he wouldn't like me back, that it would ruin the awesome friendship we had. I didn't want to sacrifice my hockey buddy.
I became increasingly obsessed with his hands. They are manly hands. Sexy hands. Until then I hadn't known hands could be sexy. But Ben's were. It came to a head one night where I would have probably done anything to hold his hand. Instead of telling him I wanted to hold his hand because I liked him, I happened to be painting my nails. I snatched his hand up in mine and before he could protest, I started painting his nails.
He actually let me. I think if he had argued and pulled away at that one moment we never would have gotten together. It was because he didn't immediately recoil from my touch that I think I got the courage up to ask him out.
And because he told me a day or so later he was being pursued by another girl. A girl named Rachel.
"I don't like the name Rachel," I said, angrily and stupidly.
"Whoa, okay," he laughed.
Later that afternoon we were talking on AIM.
"I don't know how to tell her that I'm not interested without hurting her feelings," he confided in me.
I felt my heart pounding. I knew what I wanted to type, but I was too scared. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath and typed.
"You can tell her you're already going out with me."
I immediately sprung out of the chair, strode across the dorm suite and started pacing. There, I'd done it.
Eventually I got the courage up to go back to the computer.
I knew he knew what I meant. Just to be careful he clarified.
"I'm coming over so we can talk," he typed.
He walked over to Arlington Hall and we talked. We were both nervous and happy. He admitted he had liked me for a long time but was too shy and nervous to say anything. He too hadn't wanted to ruin the friendship we had had.
I still remember it as clear as ever. He was wearing some scrubs because he had been getting ready to go to bed when we were talking on AIM. He leaned on the newspaper dispenser outside the gate that lead to the courtyard of Arlington Hall.
"You really want to try this?" He asked.
"Yeah, I think so." I leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. Our first kiss.
There we are, on his graduation day from UTA giving each other one last kiss at the same place we had our first.
I was never very romantic before Ben. I was never very sentimental. But the pictures I have of us are so very special. I have pictures of our dates to the Fort Worth Symphony's Concerts in the Garden, of course Stars games, our trips to St. Louis, Chicago, Toronto, Hawaii... They mean a lot to me when before I never had a single picture album.
Fate had to practically lock us together in a room before we finally saw what was right in front of us, but I am so glad that I finally did. I always tell him I don't know where I'd be if I hadn't gotten the courage up to type that one silly sentence into AIM.
On second thought, I probably will need that external hard drive. I plan on filling it up with our life together because I know it will be incredible. The best has yet to come.
I miss him, but I know we'll be together soon-- making new memories.
No comments:
Post a Comment