Part 2

So NOW my husband has become interested in reading my blog...

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That fall I looked forward to a year by myself, exploring the options, dating, or not! I was determined to find out what *I* liked.

It was my year to take Physical Chemistry, which was either going to rescue me as a Chemistry major or be my deciding factor to dump this major too since I loathed Organic Chemistry. I sat in about the third row in the deep pit of a lecture auditorium so I was strategically placed at my professor's eye level.

I was one of "those" students, the ones that always sat in the front.

I was raised that if I wasn't 15 minutes early, I was late. (Imagine how horrifying this is when you are 14 and there is a junior high dance to attend??)

This 9am class was my first of the day and I always arrived early before the doors were opened. A chemical engineer I didn't know always arrived early too. He had an 8am biochemistry class prior to this one and so he was always pretty punctual. We would politely acknowledge each other, but never really say a whole lot as we stood outside the JILA tower auditorium. He was immediately recognizable with his port wine stain on one side of his face. I had noted he was also in my Greek Mythology class and so we would make small talk about that class. Within minutes the people I knew from other classes would arrive, my conversations would switch elsewhere with my friends. The professor would come and open the door and we would file in.

The geek-boy friends I knew sat directly behind me. And nearly everyday, I sat next to the chemical engineer who told me his family was from Anchorage, Alaska. We would smile at each other and one day he asked me out. We dated off and on that year. Then he quit calling which was fine since I got tired of not being good enough or pretty enough or always sticking my foot in my mouth. We did maintain a polite friendship though. He continued sitting beside me... though now I wonder why? Was he copying off me in exams?

The following year when school was getting ready to start and football tickets were on sale I thought maybe I hadn't given him enough of a chance. I decided I was ready for a relationship, and well, he was good looking and nice enough.

I called him and since I knew he would be getting football tickets asked him if he would get mine too. (I had never gotten football tickets before, but thought it was a good excuse to touch base with him again.) He agreed and even rode his bike to my apartment to get my check and information from me. I thought things may be off and running with him again. I was hopeful at least after a year of being single and random dates.

The next Monday morning he gave me my football tickets. One set of general admission student tickets.

Umm what? General admission?

Oh, I thought you could get reserved seating, I mentioned to him.

He informed me that had I wanted reserved I would have had to go and pick out for myself where I wanted to sit. Apparently sitting next to him wasn't going to happen.

I was done.

Classes started my senior year in 1993. I was unsure what life held in front of me as I had just decided I didn't want to go to medical school. I surely didn't have the abilities to do grad school and here I was nearly finished with a degree in chemistry (I had loved Physical Chem by the way).

It was the first day of Physical Chemistry Lab and our TA, Scott, told us to partner up. I looked around dismayed to see my usual lab partners with each other.

You know that slight panic when you realize you are left out? I look over and saw the guy - the chemical engineer - from my PChem 1 class... the one with the port wine stain, who always stood outside the auditorium doors with me, not the one I used to sit by thank goodness.

We kind of nodded at each other, shrugged at each other and wa-la, we were lab partners.