Never Kiss on the First 11 Dates...

Then he went to Alaska for the summer. We wrote a couple of letters. Not sure I actually sent them.
I saw him at the opening social in Snow Canyon. He was gorgeous. I knew he was entirely too good-looking to be humble. Not to mention the car he drove. He also had a beat up old truck and I preferred to go places in it rather than his jacked up black camero with the skunk stripe. But at the opening social he had his motorcycle. He gave me a ride home and took off in such a way that I HAD to hold on tight to his waist.
Oh the chemistry.
But still no kissing.
We asked our speech coaches if we could do a duet act together for competition. After talking it over they decided that it wouldn’t be a good idea to pair us up because things could get ugly if our relationship went sour. We later discovered that Christine Oldham had her eye on Doug for her duet act. She had her eye on him for other things too, but of course the coaches didn’t know that. Christine was the golden child of the squad. She was there on a full drama scholarship and was homecoming queen and of course, beautiful.
So I was paired with Mike Mayo. We went back and forth that year with Doug’s act winning in one competition and mine winning at the next. He had a pretty decent Informative speech on healthy eating but for ever trophy he got, I got three or four. I competed in everything. Doug got the grades though. He took physics with the head cheerleader and helped her with her homework. She is a physician in St. George now.
There were always women trailing Doug. It was disgusting. So I basically ignored him, thinking I couldn’t really compete with those gals. It was the best thing I could have done. I was the first girl who didn’t give him the time of day and he was very enticed by that.
He went to a lot of effort to ask me to a dance I already had a date too. That was good for him. I beat Christine Oldham out of Regional Speaker of the Tournament. That was good for me.
I was working for a family with six children. I cleaned their house and tutored their 12 year old. (Of the guys that stopped by to chat in the library where we had our tutoring sessions, Doug was his favorite). They hired me to babysit over a long weekend. I asked them if Doug could come over and take us to a movie. That was where I discovered Doug’s way with children. We piled everybody in the back of his rusty orange pick-up and took them to the drive-in. Doug joked that I was his wife and these were our six children. I thought he was hilarious.
That night we talked late into the night. I told him things about myself that I had shared with nobody but Liz up to that point in my life. It really bugged me that I would do that, but I found the words pouring out of me like a river whose flow could not be stopped.
He just listened and comforted and never told a soul.
After about 12 dates we finally had our first kiss. It was in the doorway of his boss’s house. It was very magical. I was leaning in the doorway holding a big bowl of something. I was just looking at him and he came up and gently kissed me. I think there was an orchestra playing in the wooded lot next door.