I'm so much cooler online

Rachel’s carnival doesn’t start until Monday, but since I’m taking a long weekend I thought I’d go ahead and post and just link it up on Monday.

The story of Brooke and Jay begins several months before our first meeting. I had created a page on Myspace and the prompting of my friend Libby, but never really used it much till another friend (Corinn) suggested that I could use to meet guys.

Simultaneously, Jay was preparing to move down here from Ohio and began looking for people (girls) in the area that he might like to get to know. In May of 2006, I received a friends request from him as well as an email. According to him, I was one of his first Myspace friends (he signed up for MySpace on May 20th and friended me May 25th).

Apparently I had that sweet, innocent look that he seems to go for. Or else it’s the chin, he likes ‘em pointy. How else do you explain a man that thinks that two of the most beautiful women in the world are Reese Witherspoon and me?

My family had vacationed in Ohio late May, so right off the bat he and I had something to chat about. For several months he and I emailed back and forth. I knew he was different, because unlike most of the other guys on Myspace, his emails were lengthy and thoughtful and consisted of more than ‘u r hot. wanna go out?’

At one point, however, the long emails put me off. Here was this cute, or at the least photogenic, guy that spent a good deal of time talking to me. Surely there was something wrong with him, as he seemed too good to be true.
Trust me, I knew all about to good to be true. From the one that got away, who now I wish would have stayed away to the other myspace date who only smiled with his mouth closed in his pictures – for good reason.

My fears about Jay were confirmed when I posted a blog about my craving (and searching) for Planter’s CheezMania cheese balls. He took it upon himself to do a couple of pages of research about why the product was hard to find and was eventually discontinued.

Little did I know that shortly after moving down to Tennessee, he injured his leg at work. Since his Jeep was a manual transmission, he was pretty much confined to his house. Had I been stalking his comments, I would have seen that everyone was asking him how he was going and throwing around ‘get well soon’ messages.

He was hurt, bored, and so his research in response to my cheese ball ranting wasn’t all that scary or stalkerish as I first suspected, but at least for the moment it did make me question his sanity. In the years (hey its been 2 ½, that’ qualifies as “years”) since, I’ve also learned that when he does something, he goes at it full force. This man doesn’t know how to half @$$ anything. He does it all the way, or it sits in the garage for 7 months. Moving right along…

Finally in September, he asked me out. After emailing for 5 months, just coming out and asking me to go out with him would have been a bit awkward. So instead he came up with a cheesy line.

Brooke Sept. 7th, 2006:
Sounds like you've made friends in the area fairly quickly. So are you still liking it down here pretty well?

Jay Sept. 7th, 2006:
Am I still liking it here? Yeah, its pretty good, but it would be EVEN better if you wanted to do something with me sometime?! I'm such a dork, and have wanted to see ya for a while, but thats just my shy personality coming out in me I guess!

Brooke Sept. 26, 2006:
I would love to meet up sometime. I'm sorry to say that my next couple of weekends are crazy. But we really do need to plan something!

It took several weeks for our schedules to finally work, because we both had trips planned in October. I went to a friend’s wedding the first week in October and went to Green Bay the last week of the month. The weekend before my trip to Wisconsin, he traveled back to Ohio for the OU homecoming game.

I suggested Friday, October 13th. Fortunately, he wasn’t too superstitious to accept. I emailed him my phone number and ask him to call me so that we could work out the details. Surely over the phone I could tell if he was too good to be true.

He called the Wednesday before and our conversation lasted less than 2 minutes. By the end of the call I was convinced this boy had no interest in me. Nonetheless, we would meet in person for the first time 2 days later.

To be continued at Johnny Carino’s…