My Life as Annie hosts the weekly Time Travel Tuesday and asks us this week about the day we first met our future spouse.

Jim worked as an usher at college his freshman year, my sophomore year (he’s six months younger), and I would see him in the aisles seating people and thought he was a nice-looking guy. I knew that he also worked in the library, where I worked, but we never worked the same shift, so I didn’t meet him that year. The next year found us scheduled at the same time, though he worked in the Periodical Room and I worked at the circulation desk. But he had to pass by the circulation desk as he went to and from the Periodical Room to retrieve older copies of magazines that weren’t out on the shelves, so at some point I said Hi and introduced myself. That was very out of character for me — I was terribly shy and reticent growing up, but going to a smaller Christian school my last two years of high school and getting involved in things like yearbook and student council, which I never would have even attempted previously, then being in the dorm at a Christian college were some of the things the Lord used to draw me out of my shell.

So our first meeting was pretty much just meeting each other for a few minutes at work. Annie asks whether it was “love at first site” or whether it took longer. I mentioned in the “First Date Edition” of Time Travel Tuesday that it took a bit longer. I always enjoyed working when Jim was there and enjoyed getting to know him, but even after we went out the first time or two, I was still thinking of him as just a good friend. But, as I mentioned in that post, I was very excited when he did ask me out that January. We continued to get to know each other and our relationship continued to grow, and I had to work through some issues — more details are in a post about our love story from a carnival Barb at A Chelsea Morning had on that topic last September. I like to think that we grew into love rather than falling in it. 🙂 We dated for a year and a half, were engaged for six months, and have been married for 27 1/2 years.

Our Time Travel Tuesday topic this week, hosted as always by My Life as Annie, is our favorite summer camp experiences.

Wow — I’ve been sitting here trying to remember summer camp (you have to remember my childhood was a long time ago. 🙂 ) I do remember going to Girl Scout camp in my elementary years, making “sit-upons” — carpet squares that were somehow encased in something plastic and had rope or something through one end so we could tie them around our waists but have something dry and clean whenever we wanted to sit down (doesn’t that sound just so classy? LOL!) I remember learning to make s’mores, swimming in a lake (well, splashing in a lake), walking around with flashlights from the main meeting area to the tents, ghost stories and giggling girls.

Then there was a gap in my camping years until I began going to a good church during my junior year of high school and then to a Christian camp that summer. There instead of tents we were in a building of some sort with several bunk beds. I remember our pastor’s wife was there, a very straight-laced and and no-nonsense proper lady, and another lady was determined to do something prankish to her, but out of respect never did. She sure had fun thinking about it, though. 🙂 I can’t remember a lot about the camp itself, but I do remember enjoying being saturated with preaching and devotional times. That was a new experience for me, being totally away from the distractions of normal life for a week and being influenced on every side by the Word. We had some of the ladies from church as our counselors, and it was neat to see them in a different role and hear them lead devotions at night.

The one camp experience I remember the most, though, was a winter camp that I went to while on a college Christmas break. Jim and I were dating and his parents flew me from Texas to Idaho to meet them. During part of that time several people from Jim’s church were going to a winter camp with a group from the church of the pastor’s oldest son, who was a youth pastor in California. The camp we went to was an old Girl Scout camp in southern Idaho. It was fairly primitive — no indoor heat except for a fireplace, no indoor toilets, no electricity except when someone ran the generator. I’m from southeast Texas where we had snow once that I remember growing up; in college in South Carolina it was colder and we had snow more often, but nothing like snow and cold in Idaho in December. Thankfully other folks in the church contributed boots and other such gear so that I could go. I remember stepping off the “trail” and sinking hip deep in snow and being afraid of losing the borrowed boot, not being thrilled about tramping out to the the frozen outhouse, and getting buried in new snow one morning when we went down a hill on inner tubes and being so cold I couldn’t move. Jim had to take my muffler off and shake the snow out of it for me. I do remember having a lot of fun times during those few days, though, and the best thing was that one young girl was saved, and later her whole family began coming to church there and were strong members of that church for many years.

Our Time Travel Tuesday topic this week, hosted as always by My Life as Annie, is our first car or first driving experiences.

The first time I ever drove anything at all, my dad had been washing the car — perhaps I had been helping him, I don’t remember — but it was getting close to time for me to take Driver’s Ed., so he told me to pull the car from where he had parked it to wash it back up to its usual parking space beside the fence. He got in the passenger seat, but he didn’t tell me anything about what all the different pedals and dials were. I guess he figured I had been in a car enough to know the basics. I started the car and he showed me how to put it in reverse so we could back it from where it was, then pull forward. I stepped on the gas pedal for the first time — way too hard — and we went zooming back. He said, “Step on the brake! Step on the brake!”

I said, “Where’s the brake?!!”

And I backed over the mailbox. I didn’t just run into it. I knocked it over.

I’ve written before about my dad’s temper, and I was waiting for the fireworks to start — but he burst out laughing. Thankfully!

I’ve never had my very own car. I always drove the family car. I don’t even know what most cars are unless I see it on the outside somewhere. One time the family car, the second one I drove, was some kind of big long thing. A guy at church asked me once what color it was supposed to be. I said I thought it was black, but it was a little faded. Then I remembered my mom always called it Ol’ Purple. That just hadn’t registered with me before, and I was horrified that I had been driving around a purple car!

I still drive the family car, but as all four drivers in the house have their own vehicles, for all practical purposes our champagne-colored (though we call it tan) mini-van, which I unashamedly love, is “my” car.

Feel free to join in on the car and driving edition of Time Travel Tuesday here.