Memory Lane

In the summer of 2002, I signed on for a summer as a camp counselor. I had seriously high expectations for camp. One: I was going to make lifelong, fantastically amazing friends. Two: I was probably going to meet the love of my life, my future husband. He would be fun, adventurous, outdoorsy, an awesome Christian and of course he would be very, very sexy.

After a week of counselor training, I could see that none of these things were going to come true (I did make some friends. I'm not a total loser :). On one of the last days of training, we were assigned to build a huge porch on the back of one of the main buildings. This would be a great team-building exercise. I tried to only do the painting, weeding, and clean up, but eventually I was expected to help pound in some nails.

Sigh.

All around me, these huge buff girls were pounding in nails, being all tough and athletic and beautiful. One girl in particular especially hated me (yes, she actually told me to my face that she hated me) and she was there, being perfect and doing more work than most guys could do.

I was doing my best pounding in nails, but they kept going crooked. This relates to my right-side syndrome which I can tell you about later.

After trying to fix one very, very crooked nail, the director's son--who was loved by ALL, and pretty much perfect in every single way according to everyone--came and took the hammer from me with no intention of giving it back.

I walked away, defeated. Defeated, I tell you.

And so began a long summer of camp where the kids loved me and I loved them, but pretty much half of the staff hated my guts for reasons unbeknownst to me. And I had the great pleasure of watching the oh-so-perfect director's son put on a big show of diving in the pool at the Water Olympics Opening Ceremony (whoop-dee-doo) every single week because apparently, he was some amazing swimmer who also, apparently, must have talked to everyone else (because everyone loved him) except me. Little, worthless me.

Who knew that eight years later, I would be sitting next to him right now. And you know what? He is pretty amazing. Because he's my husband, and he loves me so much and I love him more than anyone in this world.

Thanks for taking the hammer from me those years ago, John!