How I Met Your Father — He Was THAT GUY

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How I Met Your Father — He Was THAT GUY is a part of a series celebrating love and marriage by telling the stories of some of our Nashville Moms Blog contributors and how they met their partners. Enjoy more of these sweet stories here!

Let me set the stage. It was approximately 11 pm one night in early September 2004. Two of my best friends rented one half of a duplex, and they were blowing up my phone because they were having a get together that I just HAD to attend. I was a college student at the time, living on my own, and working two jobs. While at the time, I loved a good party as much as the next single lady, I was SUPER tired that night and in absolutely no mood. “Please come over!” they begged. “You don’t have to stay long!” A few minutes later, my BFF said the magic words: “All of the people here are people I don’t know…please come over and just keep me company. We’ll watch movies in my room and be anti-social!” Boom! Sold.

So, I rolled out of bed…and put on the same skirt and tank top I was wearing earlier in the day. I halfway brushed my hair, didn’t bother to touch up my make up, and I was on my way. Twenty minutes later, I was sitting on the back porch chatting. A truck pulled into the driveway. “Oh! JP and his buddy are here!” an acquaintance said. Then, HE got out of the truck.

(A little backstory here: I had KNOWN of this crazy man of mine for a little while before I actually met him. We had friends who had intersecting circles. He was a cop in my town, and I worked at a fast food joint that a lot of the guys frequented. So I had seen him, but never met him. Why had I never met him, you ask? Because I was absolutely TERRIFIED of talking to him. I would disappear into the back kitchen of the restaurant when he came in and stay back there for the duration of his visit—because, GOD FORBID HE SEE ME. Being completely invisible to the man did not stop me from telling my friends and co-workers, “See that guy? That’s my future husband.”)

I looked at my friend and said “Oh, we need to go inside.” Once inside, I told her that the guy who just got out of that truck was THAT GUY, and I was totally going home. She told me she’d be right back—and she returned with two shots of whiskey. “Oh, no. You’re not,” she said. “Tonight’s the night you talk to him.”

Liquid courage imbibed, we ventured back outside.

There, his buddy started chatting me up. Gradually, though, it ended up being the four of us outside—me, my best friend, JP, and his buddy. Slowly, the night turned into morning and I had spent most of the evening talking to him. I can’t even remember what we talked about. I know at some point, we discussed ninjas. At another point, he put his number in my phone and picked out a ringtone just for him: “Baby Got Sauce” by G Love and the Special Sauce.

When we all left, he pulled up next to me at a red light waving and smiling. I called him…and he didn’t answer. So my young female mind went into overdrive and I just decided to let it go. A few hours later, he called. Turns out, during our discussion of ninjas, and how he and his buddy would battle them should they appear, he’d dropped his phone in my friend’s yard. He asked me to go to dinner and a movie the next day. A month later, I met his family. A month after that, I moved out of my house and into his. He dropped the big “L” word on me and the rest is history. This year, we’ll celebrate 12 years together, and 9 years married.

I was definitely not expecting to meet “THE ONE” that night. I was also not expecting “The One” to be the one I had been saying was “The One”.  A few months after we started dating, JP told me his friend had actually “called dibs” but he said he couldn’t help it. I’m glad I went to that party, and I’m glad he couldn’t help it.

 

JP&Me3

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Amy
Amy is a Northernor by birth, but please don’t hold it against her! Amy has called Middle Tennessee home for over twenty years and couldn’t picture raising a family anywhere else! Today, Amy lives just outside of Nashville with her husband of over seven years (JP), her four year old spitfire of a daughter (Lily), and their eleven-year-old-but-still-acts-like-a-puppy black lab (Alley). It’s a daily toss up as to who rules their house—Lily or the dog—and Amy has many funny stories to prove the battles. Amy is a working mama by day—a fraud and suspicious activities investigator at a local, community bank, and a jack-of-all-trades by night and weekend. She loves crafts, music, the outdoors, saving money and bargain hunting, gardening (and all the canning, freezing, and preserving that comes with it), comic books, and anything upcycled, recycled, or DIY, and she’s just crunchy enough to call herself a hippie. She can often be found perusing yard sales, flea markets, Pinterest, and Etsy, looking for her next big project, or playing superheroes, painting, or playing outside with Lily. Currently, Amy and her husband are on a quest to find the best burger in Nashville and love visiting all the fantastic foodie spots this great city has to offer!

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