Friday thing : future husband photo
Little did that kid know what was in store...
In three days, my husband of almost 31 years will be 54. He will still be a year (nearly 2) younger than me and, except in terms of budgeting, DIY projects, and celebrity crushes, much less mature. Yet despite the agony this has caused me for more than three decades [particularly during perimenopause], I do grudgingly enjoy his silly side. Someone needs to say things like “Hi, Hungry, I’m Dad” to the children or buy punny shirts or make the fart joke during a solemn occasion. And I guess someone needs to marry him.
We met in college when he was a freshman and I was a junior, a handful of years after this photo was taken. He was slightly buffer after competing on the high school swim team and his hair was more of a very-cool-for-1988 mullet, but the goofball sensibility was still in full effect. My 20-year-old just-returned-from-exile1/recently-broke-up-with-an-intense-boyfriend self was in exactly the right mood for a cute & funny 18-year old nerd.
Like with my mom photo, I love the grainy muted earth tones of old film shots. I’m impressed with the photographer’s ability to capture & frame my future husband’s antic body in action. Also, I’m pretty sure he’s in his underwear on this dock, on a vacation, meaning he forgot to pack his swim trunks. This is a trait he has not outgrown either.
We have this picture in one of those multi-photo collage frames, right outside our bedroom in the hallway. I stop to look at it often and am so glad I waited around for this guy to grow up. Mostly.2
I nearly flunked out of university my first year then spent five studious quarters back at community college earning an Associate’s degree so I could return on-track. There is nothing at all unacceptable about community college itself - I was only in ‘exile’ because 99% of my friends were no longer living in my small hometown.
Mostly grown up; I’m all the way glad I waited for him.