Spencer's email is still "thefrenchhornplayer".
My email is still "eenmelody"
I look at them together now, on forms that need contact information, and I smile to myself for a bit. It's an inner battle, trying to decide if it really is very sweet, or if we both were just a little bit boastful when we created the emails.
The nature of the thing, I suppose, is that we are musicians. And I'm gratified in that label, now that I have a whole degree that says so.
I first saw Spencer as I walked in to Orchestra, on what was probably the 14th of September 2010 (if I did my math right). He plays the french horn, and I didn't learn that from his email address, it was obvious with the horn at his lap or at his lips. I wish I had a distinct memory of that moment, but I don't. I was excited to be in a college orchestra, that was the important thing to me. And that's how the rest of the semester was for me. I was in orchestra, there was a rather talented french horn player with dark brown hair who sat behind me. But everybody there was at least slightly talented...though Spencer was quite a bit more so than the 2nd violins.
Spencer's version of the story is a bit different.
She walked in, and suddenly there was this beautiful blonde girl in front of me. The moment she walked in, there was something different about her and I didn't know what it was but I was going to find out. I flirted the junk out of the girl in front of me, and she wouldn't give me the time of day. The fellow french horn players all knew what was going down, and were amused by it, but this girl was a fortress. In the beginning I was bummed that I'd decided not to date anyone 6 months before my mission, but since she wasn't giving me anything anyway I decided it wasn't such a bad thing. Just frustrating.
There are two meaningful interactions that we had that semester. The first was during the 3rd session of the Re-dedication of the Laie Hawaii Temple, that October. I walked in just as it was starting, from the back door of the Cannon Activities Center, where it was being broadcasted at BYUH, I didn't want to make a stir and none of my friends wanted to go with me. So I planned to sit in the back, and there I found Spencer, who I kind of knew, and at the moment I preferred company to being completely alone, so I sat next to him.
I was so excited when she did; but I wouldn't classify where you sat as "next to me". She sat in the row in front of me, 2 chairs away. That, my dear, is "close"-ish.
Regardless, you were wearing a kilt, which I thought was strange. And after the meeting, we talked on the way out of the CAC. That's where I learned that you grew up here. And that was just about it, except I forgot my water-bottle back at my seat and felt it was rude, and I was too embarrassed, to go back and get it while I was talking to you, so I did it later.
The second (somewhat) meaningful interaction was at the end of the last concert that year. I went up to him and asked him where he was going to serve his mission. I remember being slightly crestfallen that I hadn't really known him at all, and amazed as my freshman college student figured out that I probably wouldn't be at BYUH when he came home.
All of this background came flooding back to me, the day before Spencer came home from Fresno. I realized that my professor, at the front of the class excitedly telling the class about this mile-mark in his life, was Spencer's dad.
Word travels fast, and one of the first things that Spencer heard when he got home was "Hey, there is this girl in my class who remembers you."
And like a home that you can always come back to, I saw him again in band that week. My very first thought was how do I look?!?!?, which is probably the first time that thought entered my mind in this kind of context. His belly did a back-flip.
And that was it. Well, it was the beginning.
