October 18 was a Wednesday that year, and Wednesdays were Ladies' Night at Horsefeathers. My cousin's boyfriend had recently broken up with her, and she wanted to go out and drown her sorrows. She needed a designated driver, so she called me.
My limited nightclub experience had been confined to the Bardstown Road/Baxter Avenue bars. I had never been to Horsefeathers, but even with my minimal knowledge of clubs, I didn't have high hopes of having much fun that night. There were just a handful of people in the bar when we walked in, but even so, my cousin knew several of them. I got my free soft drink and followed her while she made the rounds. We finally sat down at a tall table near the dance floor, and I sipped my Coke and kept time to the music while my cousin talked to friends.
People had started coming in, and before I knew it, the dance floor was filling up. My cousin was still chatting away, and I began people watching, but I really wanted to dance. In a booth against the wall were three guys in their early 20s. I could tell they were soldiers by their haircuts and black watches. They were cute, and I watched them spitting ice at a waitress when she wasn't looking. It wasn't very nice, but it was funny. One of them caught me laughing at them and smiled at me.
My cousin was wrapping up her conversations, and since she had work and I had class at UofL early the next morning, I knew we'd be leaving soon. I saw an older guy making his way to our table. I thought he was another of my cousin's friends, but he started talking to me. All of a sudden, he turned around, and one of the soldiers was standing there instead.
"Would you like to dance?" he asked.
"Oh gosh," I said, "we are about to leave."
My cousin looked at me, knowing how much I'd been wanting to get out on the dance floor, and said, "Oh, go ahead. We can stay awhile."
So the soldier and I walked onto the dance floor and started...talking. He told me his name, Kirk, and asked me mine. He was from Minnesota and confirmed he was stationed at Ft. Knox at Armor Officer Basic Training. He said his buddy's wife had just left him, and he was the designated driver that night. I told him I was an English major, and we talked about books we'd read and who our favorite authors were, all the while barely moving to the music.
After about 15 or 20 minutes, my cousin was tapping on her watch. I told the soldier I had to go, and he walked me over to the table. The whole way back, a voice in my head was whispering,
"Don't let him get away! You will regret it for the rest of your life!"
So I did something I never did with a guy I had just met in a bar. I said, "Why don't you give me a call?" and wrote down my number on a napkin. He wrote down his number for me, and then my cousin and I left.
In the car on the way back to her apartment, I told her, "I have just met the man of my dreams."
She laughed at me, but I said, "I'm serious! I've just met the man of my dreams."
That Friday at dinner, the phone rang, and it was Kirk. "Hey! You might not remember me, but we met at the bar the other night..."
We made plans to go to see a movie the next night. I didn't want him to know where I lived just yet, so I told him I'd meet him at the McDonald's on Bardstown Road by the Showcase Cinemas. We saw Dead Poets' Society and after we went to Shoney's and sat in the booth until well after midnight drinking coffee and splitting a hot fudge cake.
For our second date, I drove to Ft. Knox, and he took me repelling off the training tower and made me spaghetti. I knew by December that I wanted to marry him.
That was 1989. He moved to Ft. Hood, Texas in February, and after his brief trip to Saudi Arabia for the Persian Gulf War, we were married in August 1992. We lived in Texas, Arizona, and Hawaii before coming home to Kentucky where we have raised three wonderful children, now about the same ages we were when we met.
Sitting here on Valentine's Day thinking about those young kids we were, we had no idea what life would throw at us. We just knew we loved each other, and that has been enough.
No comments:
Post a Comment