My Fairy Tale – Part 3

(Part 1 and Part 2, if you need a refresher)

We’d been dating, the casual dating that happens between teens during summer, for almost a month – about three and a half weeks or so.  And because it was summer, there were water-slides, worship concerts like JIOS (“Jesus Is Our Saviour” which was our youth group’s version of Doxa) and fun times with the youth.

I spent one afternoon at his house with just him and his brother and he insisted that I watch Top Gun because I’d never seen it.  After about the third time that the theme music started again (Take My Breath Away), I was so sick of the song that he turned it off for me.

I had written a journal about all the things I wanted him to know about me and the things that I thought I wanted in my life and he actually read it!

I remember one Sunday night, waiting in the church foyer for JIOS to begin, sitting on the couch next to him.  He was constantly moving, so I pretended to fall asleep on his shoulder in the busy foyer, just to make him sit still, just to spend time close to him.  And he stilled himself for me while I slept, one of his arms around my shoulders as I curled into his side.

But then he broke my heart.

It was Wednesday night after youth group.  Everyone had filtered out of the basement to go upstairs for snacks and he took me aside and told me it was over.  He was breaking up with me.  It literally floored me – I was on my knees on the ground crying and I didn’t understand why.

Was it something I did?  Was it something I said?  Was it something I didn’t do that I should have?  What happened?

And he had no explanation for me.  But he crouched there beside me and hugged me and then the youth pastor came over to ask what had happened and Tim bluntly said “We just broke up.”

That was it.

That Saturday, the group headed out to Castle Fun Park.  I didn’t want to go – I was still depressed and the weather was absolutely miserable – it was just pouring rain in great monster buckets [really, not much of a surprise for Vancouver].  He called my house and asked my mum if I was coming.  Then when I was convinced to go, there wasn’t enough room in the cars that were heading out so he asked his parents to let him have the car that night so he could take me.

I thought perhaps there was still hope if he was going to all this effort to make sure I was there.  So I put a little more effort into my outfit and I might have even used a tiny bit of make-up.  I had a “fancy” rain coat that I wore that night and off we went into the rain.

But he virtually ignored me the whole drive (and I was the only other person in the car) and then once at CFP, we didn’t really talk much at all.  I kind of waited around and alternated between trying to have a good time on my own and following him around.

After we left, the guys (all the drivers were guys!) decided to do some doughnuts in a muddy lot just off the highway.  Lucky me, he was one of the most enthusiastic.  I feigned sleep again in the front seat of the car.

One of the other guys (not a driver) had gotten into an argument with his girlfriend so he didn’t want to ride back into town in the same car.  He knocked on the car window and asked if he could hitch a ride in our car.  Tim tried to wake me (by shaking my arm, no less – oh the indignity) and I was so angry at his treatment of me that night that I pretended deep sleep and refused to be moved.  So this giant of a man, over 6 feet, had to climb into the back seat of a Pontiac Firefly. This is the same vehicle that took only three of us to lift the back end in order to parallel park “properly”, and two of us were girls.

Then, there was a police roadblock about 15 minutes from home.  Again, he elbowed me and shook my arm but I ignored him.

I spent much of the following year trying to “win him back”, to no avail.

Part 4 – right here!