Lucky me

My students asked me when I first met Elysha.

I told them that I first saw Elysha in a late August faculty meeting as we were preparing to start a new school year. I’d been working at the school for three years before Elysha stepped through the doors as the new fifth grade teacher.

I remember seeing her for the first time very clearly. I was smitten immediately.

She remembers thinking that I was one of the cool kids sitting in the back, causing trouble with my friend, Donna.

But the first real conversation that I had with Elysha took place a few weeks later as we led a class of fifth grade students on a hike around Triangle Lake at Camp Jewell in Colebrook, Connecticut. We were walking side by side, talking about the wedding that she was planning for the spring. As a wedding DJ with years of experience under my belt, I was offering her some advice.

As we hiked, I remember thinking, “Whoever is is marrying this girl is one lucky guy.”

As I told my students the story, it suddenly occurred to me, for the very first time:

“I was that lucky guy! I didn’t know it yet, but I was thinking about myself!!”

The wedding that Elysha was planning never happened. She didn’t call it off for me, and it would be more than a year after that wedding was cancelled before Elysha and I would begin dating, but hiking around that lake on that autumn day…  little did I know that the man who I thought so lucky to spend the rest of his life with this beautiful, clever, funny woman would one day be me.

Lucky me.