There are times when I really envy my husband. I’m twenty-two, and he’s twenty-seven. We’ve been together since I was sixteen; in fact he was my first boyfriend. We met while we both worked for a movie theater. We clicked immediately, but didn’t do anything about it for awhile because we weren’t sure we both felt the same way, and it’s not like it was something we could even talk about without potential legal consequences, since I wasn’t legal, and he was my superior at work.
We had mutual friends; he had graduated from the same high school I attended the year before I started going there. I had several friends who were seniors and juniors, who knew him fairly well. After eight weeks, I finally got up the nerve to ask my mom’s permission to ask him out. She said no. I was devastated. The next day on my way to school I got a flat tire. My mom came and picked me up from the side of the road, but neither one of us knew what to do about the car, so she suggested I call one of my guy friends to fix it. Given how I knew no other guys that weren’t in school, I called him. He came and replaced the tire under my mom’s watchful eye; my only request before calling him not to embarrass me. She spent the entire time he changed the tire telling me “don’t worry Kitty, I won’t embarrass you. You’re right… he is a nice boy,” and once he was finished, gave me forty bucks, and told me to take that nice boy out to lunch, with a very conspicuous wink. He pretended not to notice.
We did grab lunch and watched a movie, but it wasn’t a date. I asked him out that Saturday (August 22, 2003), on the roof of the movie theater. He kissed me yes, and we’ve been together ever since. We’ve had lots of ups and downs, but it’s been wonderful. However, with the age difference, and our different family backgrounds, I have noticed that he has things a lot easier than I do.
I graduated high school in 2005 a college sophomore, thanks to a great joint enrollment program at my school. He realized he’d better get his but in gear, and began to really work on his pharmacy school prerequisites, and get his pharmacy technicians certification before I beat him to graduation. A side note here, he had done his core, but took time off when his dad died. He’d been attending school since he met me, but very part time, due to his demanding job managing the theater, and a car accident that kept him out of school for a semester. The classes he had left were all sequential, so it was going to take awhile.
I spent the summer in England attending classes at Oxford on a study abroad program from my school, when I got home, he proposed on our anniversary. His family was thrilled. They were happy he was finally getting married, and happy that he was making such great progress in school. My family kept wondering if I was pregnant, and telling me that eighteen was way too young to be engaged.
I moved out of my mom’s house and into an apartment, and spent the next year working to save for the wedding, and going to school overtime to finish my program at my hometowns university. He spent the year working, and getting his pharmacy technicians certification to give him a competitive edge in applying for pharmacy school. Summer of 2006, he completed his associates degree in pharmacy tech, and I finished my English BFA at my school. We got married July 15th, and despite the fact that we had been engaged a year, my extended family still treated it like a shot gun wedding.
Our wedding was paid for solely by the two of us. It was $4,000, counting the ceremony, reception, and honeymoon, dress, suit, and rings (although not my engagement ring, I have no idea how much that cost). We were married on the beach, and went on a cruise. It was great. When we got home, we moved to our states capitol, and he got a job as a pharmacy technician, and continued attending his pre-pharmacy classes, and I got a job as a preschool teacher, and an art instructor at a little pottery shop. I held off on graduating because thanks to all my joint enrollment hours, I still had tons of grant and scholarship money available, and wanted to get a dual degree in art education and English creative writing. So I attend class very part time, inching my way towards that second degree, (it has to be undergrad, once you graduate in my scholarship/grant program the money can’t be used towards a masters degree).
My paternal grandparents died, which was devastating, but also strange. They lived twelve hours away, and to this day I find myself thinking I need to go visit them. It doesn’t feel real unless I’m in their state visiting other family. I received an inheritance from their estate around the same time the shop went up for sale, so my husband and I decided to buy it.
And now here we were, two and a half years later, sitting on a couch discussing closing that very shop, and getting ready to call our respective families to tell them that we were having a baby. He was excited, and called his mother to tell her. I stalled, downloading a few pregnancy applications to calculate my due date (October 18th) and track my pregnancy (I recommend ipregnancy btw). Finally I got up the nerve to call my mom.
She was happy for me, but hesitant. She asked a lot about our plans for the future, and I filled her in on our possibilities, she asked about our insurance, and all sorts of practical questions, which I answered, while listening to my husband laughing and telling his overjoyed mother. To his family, this was something that finally happened, and they couldn’t be happier. Mine cautioned that I was very young, and worried about money. I wish I was older. Not because I would be anymore prepared for marriage and children than I already am, but because it would be more acceptable for me to be where I’m at. My family is proud of me, but they wonder why I rushed so much to finish college (I didn’t, I just got to a point where I could get a job), or get married, (there wasn’t a point in waiting any longer), or have children, (had I waited for a more acceptable time, it may have never happened, chances were so slim it could anyway). I’m happy. I’m successful, and I’m stable. Well… ok, I was a lot more stable before the economy circled the drain, but I’m capable.
My husband proceeded to call every individual member of his extended family and get congratulated. I sent out a mass text message to all of friends and my brother, let my mother call the rest of the family, and posted the news on facebook, myspace, and twitter. The friends my husbands age all instantly sent messages of congratulations, the friends my age paused to ask “is that good?” and then get excited for me.
Yeah, there are times I envy my husband
We had mutual friends; he had graduated from the same high school I attended the year before I started going there. I had several friends who were seniors and juniors, who knew him fairly well. After eight weeks, I finally got up the nerve to ask my mom’s permission to ask him out. She said no. I was devastated. The next day on my way to school I got a flat tire. My mom came and picked me up from the side of the road, but neither one of us knew what to do about the car, so she suggested I call one of my guy friends to fix it. Given how I knew no other guys that weren’t in school, I called him. He came and replaced the tire under my mom’s watchful eye; my only request before calling him not to embarrass me. She spent the entire time he changed the tire telling me “don’t worry Kitty, I won’t embarrass you. You’re right… he is a nice boy,” and once he was finished, gave me forty bucks, and told me to take that nice boy out to lunch, with a very conspicuous wink. He pretended not to notice.
We did grab lunch and watched a movie, but it wasn’t a date. I asked him out that Saturday (August 22, 2003), on the roof of the movie theater. He kissed me yes, and we’ve been together ever since. We’ve had lots of ups and downs, but it’s been wonderful. However, with the age difference, and our different family backgrounds, I have noticed that he has things a lot easier than I do.
I graduated high school in 2005 a college sophomore, thanks to a great joint enrollment program at my school. He realized he’d better get his but in gear, and began to really work on his pharmacy school prerequisites, and get his pharmacy technicians certification before I beat him to graduation. A side note here, he had done his core, but took time off when his dad died. He’d been attending school since he met me, but very part time, due to his demanding job managing the theater, and a car accident that kept him out of school for a semester. The classes he had left were all sequential, so it was going to take awhile.
I spent the summer in England attending classes at Oxford on a study abroad program from my school, when I got home, he proposed on our anniversary. His family was thrilled. They were happy he was finally getting married, and happy that he was making such great progress in school. My family kept wondering if I was pregnant, and telling me that eighteen was way too young to be engaged.
I moved out of my mom’s house and into an apartment, and spent the next year working to save for the wedding, and going to school overtime to finish my program at my hometowns university. He spent the year working, and getting his pharmacy technicians certification to give him a competitive edge in applying for pharmacy school. Summer of 2006, he completed his associates degree in pharmacy tech, and I finished my English BFA at my school. We got married July 15th, and despite the fact that we had been engaged a year, my extended family still treated it like a shot gun wedding.
Our wedding was paid for solely by the two of us. It was $4,000, counting the ceremony, reception, and honeymoon, dress, suit, and rings (although not my engagement ring, I have no idea how much that cost). We were married on the beach, and went on a cruise. It was great. When we got home, we moved to our states capitol, and he got a job as a pharmacy technician, and continued attending his pre-pharmacy classes, and I got a job as a preschool teacher, and an art instructor at a little pottery shop. I held off on graduating because thanks to all my joint enrollment hours, I still had tons of grant and scholarship money available, and wanted to get a dual degree in art education and English creative writing. So I attend class very part time, inching my way towards that second degree, (it has to be undergrad, once you graduate in my scholarship/grant program the money can’t be used towards a masters degree).
My paternal grandparents died, which was devastating, but also strange. They lived twelve hours away, and to this day I find myself thinking I need to go visit them. It doesn’t feel real unless I’m in their state visiting other family. I received an inheritance from their estate around the same time the shop went up for sale, so my husband and I decided to buy it.
And now here we were, two and a half years later, sitting on a couch discussing closing that very shop, and getting ready to call our respective families to tell them that we were having a baby. He was excited, and called his mother to tell her. I stalled, downloading a few pregnancy applications to calculate my due date (October 18th) and track my pregnancy (I recommend ipregnancy btw). Finally I got up the nerve to call my mom.
She was happy for me, but hesitant. She asked a lot about our plans for the future, and I filled her in on our possibilities, she asked about our insurance, and all sorts of practical questions, which I answered, while listening to my husband laughing and telling his overjoyed mother. To his family, this was something that finally happened, and they couldn’t be happier. Mine cautioned that I was very young, and worried about money. I wish I was older. Not because I would be anymore prepared for marriage and children than I already am, but because it would be more acceptable for me to be where I’m at. My family is proud of me, but they wonder why I rushed so much to finish college (I didn’t, I just got to a point where I could get a job), or get married, (there wasn’t a point in waiting any longer), or have children, (had I waited for a more acceptable time, it may have never happened, chances were so slim it could anyway). I’m happy. I’m successful, and I’m stable. Well… ok, I was a lot more stable before the economy circled the drain, but I’m capable.
My husband proceeded to call every individual member of his extended family and get congratulated. I sent out a mass text message to all of friends and my brother, let my mother call the rest of the family, and posted the news on facebook, myspace, and twitter. The friends my husbands age all instantly sent messages of congratulations, the friends my age paused to ask “is that good?” and then get excited for me.
Yeah, there are times I envy my husband
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