Afajita

It was October 1997. My church was having a fall retreat. Like usual, we were taking forever trying to arrange who should go in which car. I was lingering outside with a friend when this guy comes up and joins our conversation. I didn’t really know him except that his name was Danny and that he was the guy who did the announcements every Sunday. I ended up sitting behind him in the van and we talked the entire 3 hours to the retreat center.

That night we talked non-stop for another few hours. I don’t remember what we talked about but at some point I remarked, “I can’t believe we’ve been going to the same church for a year and we’ve never talked to each other before”. The rest of the weekend we continued our random conversations. Again, the content is blurry but I do remember there being a lot of laughing involved.

When I went home after the retreat I told my roommates that I made a new friend over the weekend. I also told myself that there were no romantic thoughts; I just thought Danny was super cool and was excited to get to know him better. The truth is I couldn’t stop thinking about him the whole week. I couldn’t wait for Sunday when I would see him again at church.

But when Sunday came and I saw him, all I managed was, “Hi”. I don’t know what happened. All week I was dying to talk to him but once I did I totally froze. Sunday after Sunday, the same thing happened–nothing. We were in this leadership class together in which we had to split up into small groups. Each week I hoped we would be in the same group, but we never were. Each week I would pretend to pay attention to the folks in my group, but I was always eavesdropping on Danny’s. To make things worse, I felt like Danny was ignoring me. This went on for 3 months. It was torture!

Then on New Years Eve, Danny calls me out of the blue. It was a complete surprise. He said, “I know you probably already have plans for tonight but…my friend Carl and I are going downtown to look at the ice sculptures and were wondering if you wanted to meet up with us.” I told him I did have plans but maybe I would see them down there.

Later that night, when I met up with my friend for dinner, I convinced him to go see the ice sculptures instead. It was probably the coldest night of my life trying to pretend the sculptures were cool when all I was doing was looking for Danny. I didn’t find him.

That Sunday I mustered up some guts to go up to Danny. I told him I went to see the ice sculptures but didn’t see him there. I tried to play it cool like, “Not that I was looking for you or anything. I just happen to be there too.” Anyway, he looked at me and responded, “Oh, well I saw you”. I was kinda ticked and thought, “Then why didn’t you stinkin’ come up to me? I was freezing my butt off hoping to bump into you!” Of course I didn’t say it out loud though. (Although, months later when I confessed, Danny told me that he didn’t come up to me because I was with a guy and thought perhaps I was on a date. He didn’t realize that this guy was just an old friend. At that time, Carl offered to beat him up. Danny thought about it for a second but then declined the offer.) Although the New Year attempt was a bust, at least it got us talking again; not a lot but we didn’t ignore each other at church anymore.

A couple weeks later Danny calls again and asks if I would be interested in going to his company’s post-holiday party. I was just as shocked as the New Year call. I didn’t know what to do so I said I would check my calendar and get back to him that week. Well that week I was in complete distress. On the one hand, I REALLY wanted to go on this date with him. On the other, I was a complete basket case. It was a period of time in my life that I was thoroughly enjoying singlehood and didn’t want to ruin it. This is just to say, I wasn’t on a man-hunt. I kept tottering back and forth until finally a friend from D.C. who was visiting me that week convinced me to go. If it wasn’t for her I probably would have chickened out (I owe you Amy!)

Thus, Vlady and Fajita went on their first date January 31, 1998 at the Bay Tower. 2 ½ years later, July 1, 2000, they had their wedding reception at the same place.