

Pat & I cheesing it up nearly 27 years after we first met. It's one of my favorite pictures of the two of us.

Another New Beginning

It began in the spring of 1988. I was in the middle of tenth grade and my parents made a huge decision to move...again. Being an Army brat, moving was nothing new, but after my father retired we lived in the same house for nine years. And while I was nowhere near popular, I had finally established a solid group of four very good friends...and I was going to lose them. Needless to say, the prospect of moving to a new school district was pretty devastating to me.

So here I was, mid-year in a new school; awkward, incredibly shy, and no friends to speak of. Finding a table to sit at during lunch was quite painful in the beginning. Just saying, "May I sit here?" was an exercise in rejection and humiliation until a group of upperclassmen took pity and reserved a seat for me.

And there was a boy

Almost all of the students were assigned a study hall at some part of the school day. Mine happened to be in the largest classroom in the school with stadium seating and a lot of kids. Now don't be fooled by the word "study" in study hall. The teacher was perfectly content to let the kids chatter and socialize a bit as long as we didn't roam the class or cause a ruckus. I was overwhelmed. The honor roll students kept to their own corner, the jocks were in the center being the center of attention, and on the outskirts of the class were the motor heads, the AV (audio/visual) kids aka nerds, and then there was the quiet, studious kids who were actually trying to do their homework. I didn't really fit in any category.

So as I took the steps toward a small bank of empty seats, a boy quietly caught my eye. With kind of a crooked smile he pointed to an empty desk in the row directly in front of himself and said, "There's a seat right here."

I think time may have stopped because I froze for what seemed like a very long time even though it might have been a split second.

Taking the offered seat, I smiled back and said thanks. I could feel the heat in my cheeks and knew I must have been beet red. Hunched over my desk with books in front of me, I did my best to let my hair fall in front of my face to hide. Well, that didn't work too well because at the time I had my head shaved on the sides and a full-on mullet, so all of my long hair just stayed glued to my back. Thanks, Aquanet!

The boy wasn't going to let me off that easy though. He started talking to me.

"Hi, I'm Pat."

I turned in my seat to see his genuine smile revealing two very cute dimples. His eyes were kind of gold and hazel, and like boys that age, he had a decent amount of acne.

Crap! What Do I Do?

Fuck, a boy's talking to me. What do I do? I thought. "I'm Meredith," I smiled back, though I think it may have looked more like a grimace as I was severely pained by my lack of social skills. He never missed a beat and probably never knew that I wanted the floor to open up and swallow me whole. Pretty gun-shy from being teased and bullied throughout my school years, I was half waiting for spitballs in my hair or a "kick me" sign on my back, but he was actually kind. Pat asked me all sorts of questions like where did I move from, did I like it here, what classes was I taking... you know, small talk. Another thing I was really no good at.

Day after day, I found that I was automatically finding my seat in front of him and he always found a way to make conversation - even making me laugh on a regular basis with his tales from the restaurant, his self-deprecating humor, and gentle teasing. As uncomfortable as I was in my own skin, he always made me feel at ease, but I also knew he was dating someone, and I had an impossible crush on someone who didn't know I existed, so we were actually platonic friends. I also found out that we had a lot of things in common besides school. Our parents owned a bar/restaurant and ran in the same social circles. We both worked at our parents' business, often doing homework in the back corner of the bar and getting home between 2 and 4 in the morning, depending on the night.

There Was No Escaping Him

Summer came and that was the end of that, except that whole social circle thing. As members of the Orange County Restaurant Tavern Association (OCRTA), our parents often visited other bars to help promote business, often dragging their oldest child around. Yup. Pat and I are the oldest child. Not only that, but Loughran's Restaurant was one of my family's favorite places to go for an excellent meal when celebrating a birthday or happy occasion, so I often saw Pat working in the kitchen.

In fact, I think the first time my family went there, he had to come out from behind the stove to help serve and the look of shock on his face seeing me there was kind of funny and...awkward, with a little wave of acknowledgement.

Of course, my mother saw the tiny exchange and zeroed in on me like a damned eagle. "You know that boy?"

Exasperated, I tried to talk without moving my mouth. "Mom! I go to school with him."

And so it went until our senior year. It's kind of funny how we never shared any classes - just a study hall.

Now, I have repressed a lot of my high school memories simply because they were miserable for the most part, but Pat made it bearable for at least a small part of my day.

Want more? Stay tuned for the story about our first date in Part 2. You're not going to want to miss that mess. LOL

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