Excerpt
The really nice girl I was trying to avoid, well she got harder and harder to avoid, it's like Jeff Foxworthy says “she had picked a pony out of the herd” and it was me. In the old days they would say that she had set her cap for me. We started talking and I was still dating around but she still hung in there. I liked talking to her but she was to young, I was nineteen and she was sixteen. We kept this relationship up for quite awhile, I didn't want to get hurt again and she was the type of girl you could take home to meet you're mother. She was exactly what I was trying to avoid. After awhile I noticed that I looked forward to the time we spent togather, it was time to ask her father if we could date.
Her and I walked into her dads house and I told him I would like to date his daughter. now the problem was he was an alcoholic, he had been every since his wife died when Janet was two years old. I don't know if he was drinking that night but he looked at me and said, I have nothing against you personally but if you come near my daughter again I will shoot you. When I left I was pretty angry, I decided to stay away from her and honor his wishes. This went on for a couple of weeks and I was miserable so I stopped her up town one night and told her I wanted to see her even if it ment doing it behind her dads back.
We dated for a year or so and one day she came to my apartment, we sat on the couch talking, then she started tickling me. Now if you don't know it, tickling is a way to break the touch barrier innocently. It can be a very effective dating tool, especially I you have never kissed the girl. I looked at her, remember I told you she was pretty, she had olive colored skin, dark brown eyes that really jumped out at you, she was about five foot six and the best part she had long flowing black hair that went down past her waist. She always went everywhere bare footed and I still remember what she was wearing that day, a shirt that said love in like twenty languages and cut off blue jean shorts. I looked at her eyes and just leaned over and kissed her, it scared us both so bad that she left and all I could do was just sit there with a stunned look on my face. I was in love, for the first time in my life.
After we had both calmed down a bit we started talking about marriage, my wife says I never proposed but some how we ended up married. It was then that we decided to talk to her father again. We walked in the house together and I asked for her hand in marriage, all hell broke loose. Once again he threatened to shoot me if I didn't leave right now and leave Janet alone. He wanted her to go to college but she didn't want to go. I told him I would leave but I would be back and when I came back I would take his daughter with me.
Janet and I started making wedding plans, with the help of my mother, we had everything ready to go for when she turned eighteen. On her eighteenth birthday we moved her out of her dads house and into my moms house. The next day the invitations went out and two weeks later we were married. It was a nice wedding, the only hitch was the maid of honor had a melt down right before the ceremony. My future wifes best friends parents were standing in for her parents. All but one cousin and her sister boycotted the wedding. The mother of the bride talked to the maid of honor, who was my future wifes sister, turns out that she was upset because she was the older one and she thought she should get married first. From what I hear, the stand in mom told her to get down that isle before she kicked her but down the isle. All this time the groomsmen and I were standing at the front of the church waiting, we had no idea what was going on. The ceremony went great except when the preacher introduced us, he called my Donny Wright instead of Danny Wright. We didn't know if Janets dad would get drunk and try to crash the wedding so I picked a couple of big tough friends as ushers. Their job was to throw anybody out that started a ruckus.
After the reception we changed clothes and got ready to leave. Before hand we had told my friends we were taking my van on our short Honeymoon, Then we slipped word to my brother-in-law that we were actually taking the car. I knew if there were any shenanigans my brotherinlaw would be in on it. We walked out of the church, people threw rice, {it was still ok to do that back then}, we looked and sure enough they had decorated our car, with the works. We smiled, and climed into the van and drove off. I wish I had been there to see my brother and brotherinlaw driving the car to the carwash, they had put rocks in the hub caps. We drove to Attica where we stopped for supper, the restraunt we ate at is still there and open for business after twenty five years. We drove on to Wellington Kansas, where we spent the first night of our new life.
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