The county line

Jeff, Biscuit, my niece and I were on the way home from the baseball game last weekend, and as we crossed over the county line, I giggled.

"I know it's crazy, but 10 years later, I still get the flutters when I pass the county line sign," I said.

Jeff smiled because he knew exactly what I was talking about. And to tell the truth, I had forgotten that my niece was in the car.

"Aunt Kim, what are you giggling about?" my niece asked.

Uh-oh. Now I had to tell her the story.

"Well, this is the story of how Uncle Jeff and I started officially dating," I said.

"Cool," my niece said.

It had never occurred to me that she didn't know that story and many others about Jeff and me. She was still a tiny little thing when we started dating.

"Well," I said. "Uncle Jeff and I used to work at night, from 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. A lot of nights when we'd get off work, a bunch of us would swap off going to each other's houses to watch movies. Uncle Jeff and I had been friends ever since he started working at the paper, but I was starting to think about wanting him to be more than a friend."

"I decided that I needed to tell him how I felt. It was scary, though, because I didn't think he felt the same way about me. So I practiced a speech in my head and decided that I'd tell him exactly what had been on my mind."

"When I was working those late hours, I would leave after work and drive to Grandmama and Papa's house in the middle of the night. I would get to their house in time to eat breakfast with them, then they would go to work, and I would go to bed. When they got home from work, I'd be up and dressed so we could spend the evening together. I had Wednesdays and Thursdays as my days off, so Friday afternoon, I would drive back and go straight to work. I know some people would think that was crazy, but that way, I never got off my regular schedule."

"Anyway, we were at our friend's house watching a movie one Tuesday night. My plan was to leave after the movie and drive to Grandmama and Papa's house for my days off. So I decided that I was going to tell Uncle Jeff how I felt, then when he told me he just wanted to be friends, which is what I totally expected him to do, I could drive to Grandmama's house, and she could spend the weekend making me feel better."

"After the movie was over, Uncle Jeff walked me to my car. He could tell something was bothering me, so he asked me what was wrong. I couldn't look him in the face, so I remember looking at the asphalt parking lot. The way the street light was shining down, the asphalt almost looked sparkly. It's weird how you remember little details like that."

"Uncle Jeff said, 'Are you okay?' and I said, 'Not really.'" He asked me what was going on, and I started in on the speech I had practiced. I said, 'I need to tell you something, and I just want you to remember that I'm putting our friendship and my dignity on the line.'"

"So I told him that I enjoyed spending time with him as a friend, but that lately, I had been feeling something more. Then I told him I loved him. When I had practiced my speech, I had thought he would say something like 'that's nice, but I just see you as a friend.' But instead, he said he loved me, too."

"I just stared at him. I had no idea what to say because that wasn't at all what I was expecting to hear from him."

"After we talked for a while, we hugged, and I got in my car. Then I drove 2 1/2 hours to Grandmama's house. I really wanted to stay here and talk to Uncle Jeff some more, but it was the middle of the night, and Grandmama was expecting me to be at her house in time for breakfast."

"I spent the weekend with Grandmama and Papa, but I didn't tell them about Uncle Jeff. I was still trying to figure out what was going to happen with us."

"I left Friday to head to work, and I was completely distracted for the entire trip. The closer I got, the more nervous I got. I looked up and saw the sign at the county line, and I got all kinds of butterflies in my belly. Now, every time I see a sign with the county name on it, I still feel butterflies and get giggly."

"Of course, I got to work that night, and I was scared to death. Uncle Jeff and I hadn't talked since that night, and I was worried he might have changed his mind about what he said or that I had somehow just imagined the whole thing. But not long after I turned on my computer, I got a message from Uncle Jeff saying, 'Hey. How was your trip? Want to get dinner?' I knew then that everything would be fine."

"It's funny, too, because when we started telling our friends that we were going to start dating, a lot of them said things like, 'Well, duh!' or 'It's about time.' Apparently, everybody but us could see that there was something more than friendship between us. It just took Uncle Jeff and me longer to figure it out."

My niece seemed to really enjoy hearing that story. She even mentioned it a couple of times during the weekend. That got me to thinking that we'd get to tell these stories to Biscuit someday, too. And depending on his age, I guess he'll either think it's a cool story or he'll say something like, "Eeeewwww, Mom!"