An Awkward Beginning

The story of how Mr. Goodlaff and I met depends on who you ask to tell it.  Ask Mr. Goodlaff and he will tell you we met at work, plain and simple: we were set up, it was awkward, and that's where all this trouble began.

Ask me, however, and I will tell you a different story.  History is written by the bloggers (I think that's how it goes...), so herein follows my accounting of the beginning of the great Goodlaff love story.

One day I'm sitting at my desk, freaking the hell out because that's the nature of my job, and I get an email from Mr. Goodlaff totally out of the blue saying that one of his coworkers volunteered him for elections work, and though he'd really rather not, he guessed he would help if he really had to.*  Cranky, irritable, and suffering from a lack of sleep, I thought to myself, "Who IS this guy and what the hell is his problem?" and told him something along the lines of "don't worry your pretty little head, you're off the hook."

*Editor's Blogger's Note: Here's where our accounts really differ.  Mr. Goodlaff glosses over this part, and to this day insists that his email was not the passive aggressive missive that I took it to be.  I still maintain he was cranky and that my interpretation had nothing to do with the fact that I hadn't had a single day off in a month...


We met face to face a few days later in the line of Elections duty. Having previously worked in Mr. Goodlaff's department, I knew the other employee (hereafter known as "Houdini") Mr. Goodlaff was working with and we were catching up after having not seen each other in a while.

Now, Houdini is a bit of a meddler.  Mr. Goodlaff and I each being of a certain age (under thirty, a rarity in the county), the wheels in Houdini's mind immediately started turning, and he asked me if I was "available" for this Goodlaff fellow. Mr. Goodlaff was handsome, to be sure, but he was slamming around computer equipment around as Houdini and I were talking, and combined with the email he sent me...well....   Oh, who was I kidding? He was cute, so I played coy, and said "maybe."

Fast forward about three months, when another co-worker (let's call her "Tally") decides to arrange another meeting between me and Mr. Goodlaff.  It was going to be one of those fancy-meeting-you-here arrangements where she and I went to lunch and Mr. Goodlaff and Houdini went to lunch and we just happened to go to the same place, and wouldn't you know it, there was room at their table.

Now, I knew about this plan in advance, and assumed Mr. Goodlaff did too. Imagine my surprise when, on the day of our lunch Tally informs me that he has no idea that we will be running into each other that day. Having known Mr. Goodlaff for all of five minutes at that point, I still knew him well enough to know that this was now a bad plan--he would hate this plan, and by extension, me.

I spent about an hour that morning composing an email to Mr. Goodlaff, attempting to tip him off to the plan without spelling it out for him.  In the middle of draft thirty seven, I got an e-mail notification.  My inbox contained an email from Mr. Goodlaff.  "Would you like to have lunch with me sometime this week?," he asked.  I spun around about thirty times in my chair, stomped my feet on the ground, and then dizzily declared to the office, "He asked me out!"

I told him yes, we traded a few emails, settled on a Friday lunch date, and I was able to slyly drop a hint about lunch that day (mission accomplished!). Since we already had a date for Friday, I figured lunch would be great. 

I figured wrong.

Did your relationship get off to a rocky start?