Echoes - Meeting Jessie

 Myspace blog 08/22/2007

Memories - Meeting Jessie (July, 1998)

Current mood:mellow

It's odd how the most mundane events and scenes preclude some of the most significant things.  I was on the trolley in San Diego, returning from window shopping for a Playstation game with a friend from class, a guy from the Coast Guard that was taking the same micro-miniature electronic repair course that I was.  In the car ahead of us, I heard someone making a crude joke about Marines; something about a recruit following a horse in a parade.  Whatever it was, it made me laugh out loud, which caused the girl telling the joke to turn around.  She was a tiny redhead, beautiful and friendly and flirty and WAY out of my league.  All the same, she gave me a genuine smile, as if to say thank you.  Of course, the Marines she was telling the joke to didn't see as much humor in it, but what can you say for that breed?

A few minutes later, the trolley got to my stop.  She, I, and the coastie got off.  Being a very forward girl, she introduced herself as Jessie and asked me if I would escort her onto the base, as the Navy base in San Diego is not in the nice part of town.  My coastie friend rapidly made himself scarce, and we walked to the country bar, one of two on base.  Seems that one of her friends was due to get off shift from working there and the girls were going to go have fun.  Lucky for me, it turns out Jessie's friend was going to be trapped on shift for several more hours.  This being the case, we decided to head over to the other dance bar on base to talk for a while.  At this point, I'm considerably out of my depth, having not even been in a bar more than perhaps half a dozen times, and certainly not in any romantic context.  Fortunately, the bartender took pity on me and helped me select something fruity and red for the lady, which seemed to help our discourse move rapidly from small talk to more heady subjects.

The rest of our night is lost in a bit of a blur at this point, but a few select points stick out, like watching Jessie and another young lady being the only two people on the dance floor, laughing madly and having a grand old time dancing with one another.  By the time we were ready to go, Jessie was a bit sloshed, and the heels she was wearing were not being too very kind to her feet.  This led to a very long and entertaining piggyback ride from the bar to the trolley and numerous snide remarks about her showing off her impressively orange panties in the process.

I wanted to be sure that she got home alright, so I rode the trolley back to her apartment.  I remember that when we got to the lobby of her apartment, one of her friends, an impressively serious young man of perhaps ten years, greeted her warmly.  She told him, "I really like this guy, but I know I'm never going to see him again after tonight."  I laughed, bid her goodnight, and silently resolved that I simply had to see her the next day.

That was on July 5th, 1998.  23 days later, July 28, 1998, we were married before a justice of the peace.  That's a good story, but one for another day

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