Today’s topic for Time Travel Tuesday, sponsored by My Life as Annie, is our first date.

I honestly can’t remember my first date. I know who it was with, but I don’t remember what we did. I do know I was way too young!!!

So, if it’s ok, I am going to write about my first date with my husband.

I was a junior in college and he was a sophomore. We worked in the college library: I was at the front desk while he worked in the periodical room. If both places weren’t busy, somehow he and I were both assigned to help another guy, John, whose job was to get the returned books back in place on the shelves. We all enjoyed each others’ company.

Then one day in January, after we had been working together one semester, Jim asked me out. I found out much later that he had been trying to get John to ask me out because John was very shy and didn’t date much. John kept declining, so Jim finally said to himself, “Well, if she’s such a nice girl, why don’t I ask her out.” So he did. 🙂

Unfortunately I had extension the night he asked me for — extension was our Christian college’s word for a ministry outside the college. Every Friday night I went with a few other girls to a nursing home about 45 minutes away and visited with some of the residents, especially those who didn’t receive many visitors. When I told Jim why I couldn’t go, he understood, but there was still a part of him that wondered if maybe I didn’t want to go.

As it turned out, it snowed that evening. At dinner time it was announced that all extensions were canceled because of the weather. After dinner I found Jim waiting for me and he said — and to this day he doesn’t remember saying this — “Since you can’t serve God tonight, do you want to serve mammon?” I knew he was joking, but it kind of made me wonder about this guy. 🙂

We went to a basketball game in which his best friend was playing. Neither of us are very athletic or very interested in athletics, but it was something to do on a Friday night. He told me later he discerned that it might be best to steer away from athletic events for future dates. 🙂 But we did have a good time. It happened to be a Friday the 13th the weekend before final exams.

One of my good friends was friends with Jim, and they had very much a “buddy” relationship. I think because of that and because we worked together, I thought of Jim as a nice guy who was really fun to be around, another “buddy,” but didn’t really think of him as a potential boyfriend. Yet I found myself uncommonly excited when he asked me out. 🙂 And because we had known and worked around each other for a time, I felt comfortable and could be myself.

Our relationship grew from there. We dated around a year and a half and were engaged about 6 months before we were married. That was 27+ years ago. 🙂

I don’t have a picture from our first date — I don’t have many pictures from our dating days at all, and somehow most of them are a little blurry — but here they are:

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