Friday, March 21, 2008
Summer of '89
I was so relieved when sophomore year ended. Sophomore year is the worst. The newness has worn off and you’re still so far from being done. Besides, school can be pretty oppressive. No matter what I was doing or where I was, there was always reading I should be doing instead. Horrible way to live. A mental break was always welcome.

My goal for the summer was to get a really good job and make tons of bucks. Easier said than done. After searching for a couple of weeks I got a job at an auto auction making four something an hour. It was a pretty cool job. I helped inventory cars that were coming in off the big hauler trucks. Most of the cars we dealt with were repossessions. One of the first rules I was taught was…always test the brakes before you drive very far. Yeah, I did forget that the one time. Oops. Working with cars like that changed my perspective on them. They became more of a commodity and less sacred. I learned that bumpers were for bumping. We’d go over the cars and list the features, document the serial numbers and then move them into tight lines. One of my favorite days was auction day, when we’d inventory the cars on the fly as they came in for auction. I worked with the father of one of my high school mates. He gave me a hard time at first, but eventually I earned his grudging respect. Me, I just tried not to stare at his fresh hair implants, all glorious in their perfect rows, like a cornfield.

I had worked there for several weeks when one of my good friends quit her job at the muffler plant across the road from the auto auction. She let me know so I could go for it. The next day on my lunch hour I walked across the road and interviewed. They hired me and a few days later I was manufacturing mufflers for seven something an hour. That was more like it. I did all kinds of things like working huge hydraulic presses, spot welding, pipe bending and monitoring the line at certain locations. I was part of a summer task force so at lunch there were other college students to sit with and chat. I had to clock in at 7:00 a.m. I didn’t get much sleep that summer. I was still staying out late with Don most nights. I only missed one day of work at the muffler plant and got a “very good” rating, which meant I was virtually guaranteed to be hired back the next summer. Yay, me!

I saw very little of my friends as I was spending most of my time with Don by then. He had been laid off by his employer in the early spring during some massive cuts at the plant. Honestly, my memory is unclear now where he may have worked that summer or whether he worked at all.

He was still talking about marrying me in the future. I went along with it because it was all pretty vague. Then one weekend, soon after I came home, my aunt asked me to dog sit at her place for the weekend. Don came to see me that Saturday evening. We talked about a lot of things and he abruptly said he was ready to get married. I didn’t react the way he’d hoped. I pretty much told him that it made more sense for me to finish school first because if I did then mom and dad would help pay for it. We could work on saving up and be in a good position when I graduated. It wasn’t what he wanted to hear. He left very dejected. Then, about half an hour later he reappeared at the door. He was dead serious, he wanted to get married. He wanted to do it soon. He’d move to Williamsburg to get a job and we could look into student loans to pay for school. He pretty much begged, let’s do it. He finally persuaded me.

Soon afterward we planned to tell my parents. We went to them together and sat down with them and explained we wanted to get married and here was our plan. They wanted to talk about it. They cautioned us about the difficulties and strongly suggested that it was better if we waited. I tried to argue for Don and me. Then Don says to them, “Yeah, you’re probably right, we should wait.” What??? Didn’t you beg me to come here and do this? You pulled me out on this limb and then shoved me off! Arrrrrrrrgh!

We walked away that evening planning to wait. I was stunned by what had just happened. I tried to swallow it and move on. But I was morose. I dwelled on it and sank into a terrible funk. I can’t remember if it was days later or weeks later but we were talking to Don’s dad. He was the Dean of Admissions a local college and was always trying to get me to transfer in. Um, no thanks. BIG step down. However, he knew the in’s and out’s of getting into college and paying for it. We were sitting at the picnic table in their backyard and he says, “You all can still get married. With your low incomes you can get Pell Grants to pay for school and get student loans to help with living expenses.” We can??? Once we heard that we decided the wedding was back on. This is why I like to share the blame with Don’s dad for getting me into that mess.

We went back to my parents and told them that we were getting married. We’d considered secretly eloping, but sensible me decided that the health insurance issues would be difficult. I was on my parents insurance and hiding a marriage would complicate matters. So we told them we were getting married and prayed they’d support us. They did. What choice did they have? We were hell-bent on having our way. It was on, a full wedding in a church with a beautiful dress, bridesmaids, a reception and a beautiful cake. We didn’t have much time to pull it together. I think we started in mid-June planning for an August wedding. The invitations went out, the bridesmaids were chosen, the dresses were ordered and the train started rolling.

The rest of my summer I spent planning my wedding and my future. It was a great help to me that I had a mind-numbing job which offered plenty of time to ruminate. The problem was, no matter how I crunched the numbers, it would be hard for Don and I to support ourselves. He’d need a good job in Williamsburg, pulling at least three or four dollars over minimum wage. He drove down to Williamsburg and found us a two bedroom apartment to rent. We arranged to move in after the wedding in August. Mom and Dad were covering our wedding costs. I applied for the Pell Grants and got them. My education costs were covered for the next two years. I also applied for student loans. I got about $2000 a semester that would supplement our income for living expenses. Because it would take a while to get the first check I took out a promissory note to bridge me till the loan money came. When I received the student loan money I put it in a special account to use to pay the monthly installments on the promissory note. Over the summer I saved up over $2000 and when combined with my savings I had a nice little nest egg to get us started. Don brought to the table…pretty much nothing.

It was glaringly obvious that Don didn’t have much to offer, other than his devotion and...well...hot sex. I can remember even asking him about it point blank. What do you have to offer me in this relationship? He couldn’t really come up with anything. Pathetic. What’s more pathetic is that I still persisted with the wedding plans. I was still in love, after all. The heart wants what it wants, even when the head is screaming “No, no, no!” His parents were behind us, my parents were (reluctantly) behind us, gifts were already starting to arrive and everyone was expecting a wedding.

Then came the two most crushing blows. Three weeks before the wedding I found out that it was Don who had been stealing from me all along. Earlier in the summer I had lost $120 in one whack. I had been planning to go to the book fair and buy some books, one of my favoritest things to do. On the way to the book fair I pulled out my wallet to check my money and review my book budget. I was down to $10. The rest was gone. I don’t even remember how I rationalized the disappearance that time. Don had no idea what happened to it. I asked. I was really devastated because I wasn’t going to get to buy any books and the book fair wouldn’t happen again till the fall. It was completely depressing. The issue finally came to a head shortly before the wedding. I had a $20 bill lying on my dresser in my room. Don was at the house, Don left, the money was gone. Now the only suspects were my parents, my brother, his friend who was staying over, and Don. I knew in my heart it was Don. I called him when he got home. It was probably 2:00 a.m. I told him I knew it was him and begged him to admit the truth. After much cajoling he finally admitted it. I was crushed. All along it had been him, all the way back in the fall he had started doing it, when we were first dating. He watched me agonize over losing the money, me thinking I was losing my mind because I couldn’t keep track of it. Just stunning. The next day I went to see him. That was the one day of the summer I called in sick to work. Don had pawned some of his things to get some money to pay me back. It was a pathetic gesture, but it was something. Most of the money that was stolen from me had been money for us anyway. The train kept rolling on.

Two weeks before the wedding came the second blow. Another idle conversation with Don’s mom, another revelation. Kathy, the ex-wife, kept trying to call Don because…well...Don had a son.

Next up...limping toward wedded bliss.

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