Mrs. Conception

The summer between my first and second years of graduate school in South Carolina, I lived in Los Angeles with my classmate, Miss Smith. This was her first time even living out of her mother’s house, never mind all the way across the country, and by July she was utterly homesick. She decided to go home, and I was left on my own until August (which I’ll admit was not horrible, considering we had rented a one bedroom apartment). Thanks to the miracle of Instant Messenger, my iMac and my alone time gave me ample opportunity to better get to know Mr. Andrews, who up until this point had been nothing more than a classmate, albeit one I had a secret crush on. He was in South Carolina, gathering up shopping carts across a steaming Walmart parking lot for a living, which allowed him to save up enough money to come visit Hollywood (and me) at the end of the summer.

We had such a good time that week –  visiting Dodger Stadium, attending a taping of The Tonight Show, witnessing a valet crash an Escalade on Hollywood Blvd seconds after being handed the keys,  and, oh yeah, getting tattoos – that he decided to scrap his plane ticket home and drive back across America with me. After a quick trip up the PCH to visit his brother in San Francisco, Mr. Andrews and I had embarked on our first joint cross country roadtrip (there would be many more to come).

Our first night going east, we stopped near Salt Lake City at a deserted campground in the mountains. It was unimaginably beautiful, and as we sat in our little Kmart tent, we got philosophical. Who would have thought, we mused, as we sat in Research class as strangers, that one day we’d be camping out in Utah together? With tattoos! Unbelievable, we said. Never would have imagined it.

This became a running gag along the rest of the trip. Who’d have thought we’d be buying sweatpants together in Laramie, Wyoming? Who’d believe we’d be eating late night dinner at a Perkins in Kearney, Nebraska? Who’d imagine he’d show me my first episode of The Sopranos in Jeffersonville, Indiana? Not us, that’s for sure.

Once we were home and back to being grad students, we spent the especially excrutiating moments in our Fall Semester classes passing notes to one another. Where do you think we’ll find ourselves next summer? In Spain, getting lip piercings. In Moscow, watching Sex and The City dubbed in Russian. In a Airstream, on Mars. It was a fun way to distract ourselves when Creativity class was stifling our creativity.

Last night, before we fell asleep, Mr. Andrews and I were reminiscing about our grad school days. We touched upon on our note passing habit when Mr. Andrews stopped to exclaim with not a little bit of shock, “We’re married now!” I had to agree I had felt just as freaked out when we brought up the subject.

“What if we had put that in a note?” he mused, “In five years, we’ll be married.“

“We should go back in time and pass it to ourselves,” I said.

“We’d never believe it.”

And yet, we wouldn’t have it any other way.