Close encounters of the ‘old boyfriend’ kind (part 1)

Yesterday there was a funny blog post on Segullah about running into old boyfriends.  It made me laugh—the author did indeed have a great story.  It also made me think of my own close encounters…the good, the bad, and the ugly…

Let’s start with the ugly.  It was Memorial Day weekend, 1995.  We were almost ready to move from Idaho to NC, so were spending a weekend in Utah to say goodbye to family there.  We had decided to spend this particular day at the zoo.  In the morning it was raining but we went anyway because we thought the rain would clear up.  After walking around the zoo (in the rain) for a little while we decided we needed something from the car and walked back to the entrance.  Just outside the gate stood a small group of people huddled under a couple of umbrellas, and much to my surprise one of them was my Young Women’s president from Iowa, a woman that I had loved dearly and had not seen since my graduation from high school 11 years before. 

I ran up to her calling hello, but she looked at me with bewilderment.  In that moment I had two crystal clear awarenesses—the first was exactly what I looked like that would keep her from recognizing me.  Let me elaborate.

On that memorable Memorial day I was almost 7 months pregnant with Josh.  (7 months being the time people routinely started asking me if I was going to have my baby that week, even when I was only having a one baby.)  For some reason I had decided that the perfect complement to my tent-like white tshirt that day was my favorite pair of maternity pants—a pair of knit capris, black with BIG white dots.  Topping that great get-up was my new now rain-frizzed recently permed hair.

No wonder she didn’t recognize me!

And right on top of that awareness was the second awareness that standing with her under that umbrella was her son, my first real boyfriend, affectionately referred to in my family as ‘Scotty-Potty.’  Standing right beside a tall, slender woman who I immediately realized must be his wife. 

Ugh…in the moment I could cheerfully have melted into the pavement.  Instead I blithered like an idiot for a few minutes and then left with Russ and Cindy Lynn.  As we walked away all I could think was that Scotty-Potty was wiping the sweat from his forehead and thinking “whew, so glad I dodged that bullet!”