Jake and Carolyn
This is me and my wife. We like stuff.
Carolyn and I go way back. We would have first met when my uncle David and Carolyn’s aunt Barbara got married (I don’t really remember the date, but after Carolyn worked some numbers we think we were either 8 or 9 years old). They had a reception in the Garden Court room of the Wilkinson Center at BYU. We were both technically there, but I can only remember random people singing, my uncle Randy’s strangely colored suit and scrounging as many little square mints I could out of the little dishes on the tables. Carolyn on the other hand only remembers crying and being hysterical because she did not get her way. Needless to say we don’t remember meeting.
Well a few years later we happened to both be in Provo, UT going to school. I think that I was there my first semester before my mission in West Virginia. Harry Potter was in full swing now and the first movie had just come out. Obviously we were all going to see it, all of us being Barbara and her kids, Bonnie and Carolyn. There were probably other people, but I really don’t remember exactly how it all happened. I am just making it up based on how well I know everyone. I am an unauthorized wand maker, as a side note, see I have this problem in that I like to make stuff I like to knit and crochet and do carpentry and what ever else, but the problem I always run into is what to make. So, as an excuse to use the lathe, I made some wands (I still have a good majority of them, by the way). I made a large variety; I even went to the extent of getting some exotic woods so I could make some fancy ones. Bringing it all back to the original story I brought these wands with me to the movie and let people carry them around to ensure that we all looked good and nerdy. No romantic interest here yet, we did kind of feel like cousins having our aunt and uncle married and all. Well I left for my mission and Carolyn went on to be various characters and Disney World, and do some schooling.
Carolyn got back to Utah before I did so she was established again at living there. I returned to Olympia from my mission in February 2004 and worked until the Fall semester started up in August. I went down to Utah a bit early to get a job and a place to live, in the meantime I stayed at Barbara and David’s house. Barbara tried her best to set me up with various girls she knew from round about, but I am a little shy and I did not get into it much. Sunday rolled around and rather than sit around all day, it was suggested that Carolyn take me to her stake choir practice. This practice was where I acquired the title of Carolyn’s “cousin friend”, which would lead to some mental struggles farther down the road as we will see soon enough. Choir practice was uneventful, but I did finally get to meet Carolyn and talk to her for a little while, a very little while considering I sing bass and she was singing alto.
Adding to the weirdness of us liking each other, we met most at “Family Dinner”. These dinners back then were held in Carolyn’s Grandparents house known as “781″ which was conveniently enough the number address on the side of the house. These dinners were very nice laid back gatherings, at least for me they were pleasant. It was in a small space so you could have a nice good look at someone without drawing attention. I was interested in Carolyn for a long time and tried really hard to to ask Carolyn out for something. Gradually other people began to notice that we were opposite sex and the same age so naturally people asked me why were not together (we had never hung out or gone on a date at this point).
The Folk Dance Team
Carolyn made the first real move and said I should tryout for this folk dancing team she was on. What a good opportunity to be close to her and to have an excuse to hold her. I show up to the tryouts and it was a breeze, they just needed male bodies to come. Now that I was on the team I started to realize I was not going to do exactly what I had imagined. Folk dancing is more of a group dance that was part of some countries culture that was just a fun get together. You switch partners all the time and when you are in pairs the coach tries to put like heights together and Carolyn is shorter than me. She TRICKED me!! It was fine though good exercise. I did try to be her partner when ever possible, but she was in high demand and I did not get to be with her very often (as a side note she collected me for the team because the coach said he was going to have to cut girls off the team if they could not find some boys).
I was also involved in ballroom dance which I love. A couple of heart wrenching moments happened when I would be at a big ballroom dance and see Carolyn dancing with her boyfriend. Eventually we did get to dance together and took a class together we also entered a Cha Cha dance competition and were quarter finalists out of 100 couples.
I tried to ask Carolyn out on dates, but she was often busy with school, work and a serious boyfriend. Finally she suggested a time when she would be available and asked me out. After going out once or twice all of Carolyn’s family knew and there was a lot of advice, mainly telling us not to get involved because it would be messy. I was confused because I thought they were all for it or at least they were a month prior. Carolyn’s family all decided that if we had a bad break up that Carolyn was disinvited to Family dinner.
When we were more serious and her boyfriend was now me, I had her over to my apartment for breakfast of waffles (now known affectionately as “Waffles of Love”). My sister Megan had sent me a waffle iron and some pots because I did not have anything. The waffle iron was the best because it made heart shaped waffles so with a breakfast like that she was all mine.
That is pretty much how it all went down.