It was Super Bowl Sunday 2003...

The Super Bowl has a special place in my heart… Not for the game itself (I couldn’t care less about which teams are playing unless it’s the Saints), not for the halftime show (we missed the one exciting halftime with the Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction while gone to pick up a pizza), and not even for the commercials (although they’re usually the most exciting for me)…

It’s because it was during halftime six years ago that Derek and I became an official couple, and the rest, as they say, is history… Not that it was that simple… There’s always a story, so I figured now was as good as a time of any to share it.

It started with a night out at Sports Rock Café (classy, if you remember it) in early January. I was out with some girls, and Derek came up to talk to a friend of mine, Melanie. They were friends from Vicksburg, so he just sat down next to me, and we started talking. It sounds cheesy, I know, but it was the easiest conversation I’ve ever had with anyone. And he was cute. We went our separate ways, but the next day, we were both asking Melanie about each other. He came out with a group of us that next night to Mugshots for the Dave Matthews Cover Band (how old does that make me sound?), and we talked and danced all night. I even asked him to go with me to our next DG date party a few weeks away.

He started calling me, and we started seeing each other. The trouble was that I was also sort of seeing two other guys at the same time. Let me make it clear right here that I never, ever had this much luck with guys before, and I had never, ever dated more than one person at a time. It’s too stressful. I continued to see all three for the next few weeks but was spending most of my time with Derek. Then Super Bowl came around…

To make a long story short, after Derek figured out that I was seeing other people, he decided that night that he wanted us to date exclusively, and I agreed. That was January 26, 2003, and we’ve been together ever since.

Fate was on our side when I graduated that May and got a job at the newspaper in Vicksburg. Derek was home that summer before heading back to Ole Miss in the fall. We had time to build up our relationship before making it long distance for the next two years. It wasn’t easy, but we made it. He graduated in May 2005 and moved back to Vicksburg. We got engaged three months later.

And we lived happily ever after. :)