How We Met...

So, before I get started with telling the story of how I met my girlfriend’s family, I want to first tell you about how I met my girlfriend…

About four, almost five years ago… man, has it been that long already?… I started directing one act plays for a small theater company in Santa Monica. They were fun. A good exercise in directing actors, making quick but precise decisions, and sticking to those decisions until you see your work come into fruition that very same day. The experience was great, especially for a director who doesn’t get that much work in the business at the moment outside of doing his own projects. Needless to say, along with the experience of being involved in the continuous rotation of a one-act showcase, you get to meet a lot of new people. A lot of people who are like-minded… a lot of people who aren’t… a lot of people you don’t get a along with… and a lot you do, which, I am happy to say, that through the years many I now call my friends… and this is where I met my girlfriend… well, where I met my girlfriend before she was my girlfriend.

For three years, my GF and I were merely acquaintances, only seeing each other every third Sunday of every month. Just friends. The occasional drink and/or nacho or enchilada shared at the local Mexican food restaurant down the street from the theater that everyone went to after the one-act showcase was over. Now I must make mention that every outing like this was in a group setting and that those “shared” drinks and/or nachos, weren’t really ever shared… they were more like… passed down from the Waiter to the waiting hands of the rightful owner.

Then one Sunday, your typical third Sunday of every month, where every one from the theater company met to produce, act, direct these one-act plays, it hit me… kind of like a slap in the face, or some mentally retarded kid trying to play the trombone in my ear… regardless, it got my attention. I was standing at the entrance of the theater kind of day dreaming, thinking about whatever it was I was thinking about… I think at the time I was either hung over, or still drunk from the night before and thinking to myself, “Why the hell did I agree to do this today?!”… Anyway, I looked down from the blazing sun… it really wasn’t that hot, I just had the hang over sweats… and for the first time I saw my not yet GF… not as just an acquaintance who sometimes sat by me at the local Mexican restaurant eating chips and drinking margaritas, but as someone I might want to get to know better…

So from that point on I made myself visible. More conversation, more flirting... even though my flirting doesn’t really qualify as flirting... If I had to describe what my flirting looks like visually, I’d probably compare it to watching that lady on Youtube who fell off a platform while stomping on grapes. Incase you don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s a visual for you:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5utqi_QtRU

It’s pretty bad… right? When it comes to flirting, I live a life of embarrassment and injury, all the while sounding like a mixture of a bus horn and a walrus... are your ears ringing as much as mine are? Anyway, she never took notice of my attempts… even the time I asked her to a fake prom during one of our group gatherings at the random Mexican restaurant down the street from the theater. Here, let me paint the picture:

The night was in its adolescence… the moon cresting in the sky at about midnight. Mariachi music booms through the 1970’s speaker system of this small, rundown Mexican joint, it’s hiss and slither more ear aching than comforting. The orange hew of mafia lighting bouncing off the cartoonish murals depicting Spanish Independence light the patio in a dim, almost heavy fog… it’s hard to see… hard to concentrate on anything but the circus mural sitting above my head showing the all time favorite Mexican pastime, something comparable to the United States' affliction with Major League Baseball… the Tijuana Donkey Show…

Okay, okay… the donkey show mural wasn’t there, but it should’ve been… it’d be awesome… so where was I… Oh, right…

The orange hew of mafia lighting bouncing off the cartoonish murals depicting Spanish Independence light the patio in a dim, almost heavy fog… it’s hard to see… hard to concentrate on anything… it might be that at this very moment I’m starving and all I can smell is the essence of tortilla’s hanging in the air… but none-the-less, it’s hard to concentrate on anything… anything at all… but then my eye catches something in the distance… a brunette down at the end of the table talking about how she was never asked to go to her prom back in high school and how she would have loved to have gone. BANG!

Immediately I knew I had an in… no more falling off platforms while smashing grapes. It’s on… Fake or not, I knew I was going to ask this girl… this girl I had been acquaintances with for the last three years… to prom. After about an hour and half, four margarita’s, three baskets of chips, a four cheese chicken quesadilla and stomach ache beyond something I have ever felt before, I finally grew a pair… as the mariachi music swelled in a clatter of shakers, guitar and accordion, I walked over and asked… “Hey. Will you go to the prom with me?” My not yet GF looks up with her beautiful eyes, looks at me quizzically and says, “What?”

The music falters, stammers to an abrupt stop as if the bands lead singer ran out of stage and toppled off into the audience below… my ideal moment shattered by yet another bout with the lady from Youtube… GOD DAMN YOU!

Now if you ask my GF now about this moment, she swears that it never happened… but it did… and it went down horribly. But even though it did indeed happen, it surprisingly opened the door for a one on one drinks opportunity, which only took me about another nine months to actually make happen… but when it did, it went off without a hitch… well, there were a few hitches… one of which was the fact that my not yet GF at the time almost didn’t show up because at the time she had made a pact with herself to stay single and become the best salsa dancer in the world…

Thank God she showed… and after a few hours of conversation, three bottles of wine, lots of laughs and some scotch, I found myself sleeping over at her house because I was too drunk to drive… way to go alcohol! The next day marked the beginning of my non-single, not falling off of platforms and being embarrassed about it life… and a few months later, I made my not yet official GF, my official GF.

After dating for just over six months, I had yet to meet my girlfriend’s family… and she had yet to meet mine… but after that amount of time together, it was inevitable that it was going to happen…

Next up... the amazing weekend of meeting my girlfriend’s family for the first time…. BIG NIGHT!