In January of 2007 my brother Bryan had just come home from his mission, and I had just come home from studying in New York. We both had full-ride academic scholarships to Arizona State University, so we decided to move to The Valley, find an apartment, and go to school. We found a cute little apartment that I just had to have and moved in on a Saturday, and then we found the nearest singles ward and went to church in our new ward, on a Fast Sunday. Bryan and I walked in together, sat together, and quickly realized that we weren't just the new people in the ward, we were being seen as the new couple in the ward.
Thank heaven it was Fast Sunday so I could go up to the podium, share my testimony, and set the record straight!! As I was walking up to the stand, I saw the most horrific outfit on a male I had ever seen! There, on the front row, I mean the VERY front row, sat a frizzy haired, khaki pants and blue blazer wearing, note taking, boy. I should have been VERY turned off by his get-up but for some reason I was intrigued. I instantly knew we would either be worst enemies or best friends, and I needed to get to know him asap to find out which it was. I finally made it on the stand, and I kind of bore my testimony but I mostly introduced myself and let it be known that Bryan was my brother and NOT my boyfriend. Then I sat down and enjoyed the rest of the meeting.
As soon as the meeting was over, a flock of single people swarmed to that frizzy haired boy on the front row and I watched as he smiled, listening to, and entertained them all. They all looked at him with admiration, respect, and love, and it was clear that people just wanted to be around this boy. That furthered my theory of us either being worst enemies or best friends, and being that he was soooo popular I leaned towards us being enemies. But I still had to find out.
I knew that he noticed me, and I certainly noticed him, but my interest in him seemed a little stronger than his in me, so I ran with it and started showing up wherever he was. I found out he was in choir, so I started going to choir also, and it was there, in choir that he introduced himself as Collin Smith. My questioning was over, the second he spoke to me, I knew we were going to be best friends. And we were. And we are. :)
After a few Sundays of casual flirting, and making no plans to hang out outside of church, a ward activity was announced. March Dating Madness, they called it. Each person was to show up to the church on Monday night, have a brief video interview filled with first-date type questions (where are you from, what's your favorite color, etc.) and then all of the videos of all of the people being interviewed would be shown. Collin and I both thought the idea was lame, but we also both decided to support the ward, and we both went to the activity. Seperately.
We each got interviewed, and then sat in the church and waited for the video of 50 single people interviews to start. As we waited, Collin and I found ourselves sitting next to each other, and before we knew it we were both having a really good time mocking the activity and flirting a little. Then papers with everybody's name on them were handed out and the video began. We were supposed to watch each interview and match a boy and girl up on a date, based on their interviews. So, Collin and I collaborated and started having fun matching up people that should never go on a date together and laughing our heads off. Little did we know, everybody else in the room, on their little piece of paper, was matching us up, to go on a date.
So Collin called me a few days later to tell me he was going to Europe and wouldn't be back for a while, so our date would have to be postponed. I thought one of two things was going on, either he's trying to blow me off, or he's a really rich hot guy who goes to Europe and he actually is going to be gone for a while. It turns out it was the latter. So he came back, and he invited me on a date.
He picked me up, and he had a plan. We were going to go meet some famous designer and get ice cream. Then it turned out the famous designer wasn't at the venue Collin thought he'd be at, so we just got ice cream and he dropped me off. Our date lasted a total of about 45 minutes. I thought he hated me.
So I came home and sulked a little, and tried to get the date, and Collin out of my head. Then a couple weeks later Collin called me and asked me if I could help him with a ward activity. I told him yes, he came and picked me up, and the truth is that the rest is history. We hit it off that day, and we've been together ever since.
