For those of you who have read Ray’s blog about our second date, let me add a bit of fluff to the story from the wife’s point of view. For those of you who haven't read his post, go read it now.
I remember the moment I was told to stay away from Ray with great detail. The QA manager and I were walking down the dock together. For some reason or another I had been “loaned” to QA to assist with a project and would be walked through it that particular day. There were a number of people in our building who either utilized golf carts or bikes to maneuver through the warehouse and on this day there was a golf cart headed straight at us. Driving this cart was Walmart Ray. Really, when we needed something and we needed it from him, we’d page “Walmart Ray, please come to door XXX for assistance.”
It’s his fault. He told us to page him that way. I think it was because he was still a bit insecure about his last name. He had a run in with a Hispanic orderfiller in his previous DC who told him when he said his last name certain way, the way he’d always said it, it sounded like a derogatory phrase in Spanish. So, my assumption is that not only was there another Ray in the building that worked for the third party company, but there was a fear of someone thinking he was being ugly on the paging system. So Walmart Ray it was.
Well, Walmart Ray had helped me during my first few weeks on the dock as a supervisor to learn the computer system we were using and taught me how to read the paperwork that came from the traffic office so that I could effectively teach my associates how to know what to do when they received their packets. All that to say, I knew who he was and his personality. I had already pegged him as a certain type of male, one which I have a name for, but won’t put in this blog post.
So back to my walk with the QA manger. We were walking down the dock and we see the golf cart headed toward us so we take a step or so to the side so it can pass without fear of it plowing us into the cement. Apparently the manager had recognized Ray, because she smiled and waved and he did the same as he drove past us. She then stopped, so I did the same since she was leading the way, and she put her left hand on my right shoulder and said, word for word, “If that one comes anywhere near you, run the other way. Just run.” I smiled, laughed and told her I’d already figured him out. Her reply, “Good.” You could tell by the look on her face that she was serious.
I remember seeing him after he had the crap beat out of him and thinking to myself that he could use some humility in his life, but man, it really looked like it hurt! The gossip floated through the warehouse like the fog off a lake in the morning hours. It was thick and plentiful. The more I heard, the more I realized that there was a lot of truth to the gossip and then watched people look at him as he walked through the building as if he had the plague, which I guess could have been a possibility. (To type “haha” or not to type “haha”? Or would a smiley face be a better option? hmmm)
He asked me out the weekend after he returned to work. My answer was a simple, “No thank you.” While in my head I was thinking, “You just don’t learn, do you?”
I think I became a project at that point. You know, like collecting a full series of 2006 Topps All-Star baseball cards. (You like the reference back to his blog?) He was in the Traffic office every day that weekend, multiple times of day. He always needed something and it was always something mundane. He needed copies of this or a packet of that. It was always something. His office was in a completely different part of the building than mine, yet he still came to mine for copies. Paging Captain Obvious! Captain Obvious do you have a copy?
On Monday, February 13th , 2006 (Yes, I have a knack for remembering dates), I was at the back counter of my office sorting through some papers when Captain Obvious entered the office. The door to the office had a 4 or 5 foot hallway before you walked into the open of the office, so I was able to stop what I was doing and look to my right to see who had entered my office. When I saw it was Ray I remember smiling to myself because he was immediately looking towards the back corner of the office, you know, the corner where I sat and would have had my back to the door if I had been at my desk. But since I wasn’t at my desk, I got the first look, not him. That definitely pleased me.
He stopped short and was turning around when he saw me at the back counter. He came over and had some papers in his hand and explained that he just needed to make some copies. Again, there was a copy machine within feet of his own office. I asked him if he wanted me to make them for him and he said sure. So I took the papers and set the machine to make his copies, then went back to my papers.
He walked closer toward me and I stepped aside a bit. I had a thing about keeping my personal space. I had recently ended a relationship that I had no business having in the first place and had ended a friendship that was more than a friendship, but less than a relationship. It was complicated and unhealthy and caused some real confidence issues and emotional scarring. I had just put the pieces of myself back together, was back in church, had lost about 40lbs and was looking pretty good if I say so myself. Then there was Ray. I still had the manager’s voice in my head telling me to run. I had all the stuff I knew was true that I really didn’t want to deal with, not to forget the things that I had heard that was unconfirmed, but pretty close to the stuff I knew was true so I lumped it in as well. Then there was this guy that since he came back to work, he wasn’t the same. He acted differently. He carried himself differently. He wasn’t maintaining his reputation. It had fallen and shattered to pieces. This was not Walmart Ray that was standing next to me at the copy machine, yet I still stepped aside. It’s hard for us sometimes to allow people to change and grow. Skepticism is just so easy.
He made chit chat while the copier copied and stapled his packets. He told me about the revival a few weeks back at church. He told me that the church was having a Valentine’s banquet that week and I thought, oh, here we go. He’s going to ask me to the banquet. Not my ideal first date. It’d be a bit uncomfortable for me to say no, I don’t want to accompany you to a church function. He didn’t ask and I was glad. He did utilize it as a segue into asking about my relationship. He asked, “So do you and your honey have plans for Valentines?” I told him I didn’t have a honey. It wasn’t until the other day that I found out he already had that scouting report in his pocket. He then proceeded to ask me to lunch and a movie. I agreed. I had a head slap moment asking myself what I had just done, but decided that a girl had to eat and free is always good. Oh my stomach was already in a knot.
He sent me an email when he got back to his office asking for my number, so I sent him my number, 3066. It was my extension in the office. I don’t remember if he called me or if he sent me an email, but one way or the other he let me know that he already had that particular number and was wanting my home number. Ahhh! I gave him my cell number and on we went. When I got out of work that night I had a voice mail on my cell and it was from Ray. He said he was just making sure I hadn’t given him the number to the weather channel or something like that. Yes, I still remember the message, because it made me laugh and made me nervous at the same time. It had been a while since I had given my number to someone that I intended to go on a date with…Then it struck me. I was going on a date. Crap what had I done?!?
Back to Ray’s blog since the first date has yet to be disclosed to the world at large (It’s a good story). I didn’t know he asked someone how to pronounce my last name. I wouldn’t have thought anything of it if he had mispronounced it. I had spent 24 years of my life at that point with people mispronouncing it. It really didn’t matter. The funny thing is that when I read his blog and learned he asked someone, his description of that person clearly defined one person. He won’t know until he reads this that that particular person had nothing but kind things to say about him. I didn’t understand at the time why she was talking him up, but she apparently had the inside track.
As we drove down I-10 from the movie theater after our first date, I was thinking to myself that he could make a good friend, but didn’t seem like relationship material. Then he popped into the office the next weekend and asked if I would like to meet him for dinner at Outback. Well sure! Again, free food is a good thing and Outback was a great thing. Oh, and our conversation wasn’t so bad on the first date. I could stand to listen to him some more for free steak. Mmmm, steak!
When he let the words, “I want to be honest with you.” fall out of his mouth at the restaurant, I wanted to yell, “No, the steak hasn’t come yet!” Obviously that didn’t happen and he continued and spilled his life story on the table. It was ugly, sorry, shameful, full of disgrace and ended in redemption. It made me smile. So, I took my turn and laid my cards out. While they were a different hand, they were full of the same characteristics as his. What a pair. He smiled and made a statement to the effect of, “And I was worried we wouldn’t have anything in common.” I smiled back. We talked the rest of the night, past the closing time of the restaurant. The doors had to be unlocked to allow our departure from the restaurant. We stood in the parking lot and talked for a while longer about ourselves and each other. I think we were still trying to convince the other that this was a bad idea.
We had stopped talking for a bit and were just standing there staring at each other. It was then that he asked if it would make me uncomfortable if he kissed me and I replied that it wouldn’t and yes, it was bad. It’s actually on the worst kiss list as #1 for me. The second kiss was not horrible, or bad, or okay. It’s a memory that I can think of when I’m in an aggressive mood and it makes me smile and immediately soften my tone and body language. As Martha Stewart would say, “It’s a good thing.”
I did make a phone call that night and tell someone that I would marry him. Such a move in mindset from the beginning of dinner to the end. It was as if the continents had come back together, but not in a drift, but rather through a turbulent disaster. I say disaster because the next few months were a whirlwind and rough and changed the course of my life. It was one of those times when it’s all over and you look back, there’s only one set of footprints in the sand. As cliche as it sounds, it's the truth.
Here's a picture of the coaster Ray mentioned in his blog
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