Baytown, Texas
July 2002
Kami and I met while I was working at Lakewood Church of Christ for the summer. I was a youth intern, about to go into my senior year at ACU, and I’ll be honest, I wasn’t really looking forward to it. Having been an intern for the previous two summers (in Hilton Head, South Carolina and Cedar Hill, Texas), I really enjoyed the “work,” which consisted most days of playing ping-pong, going to baseball games, and amusement parks. It’s not that I didn’t want to work at Lakewood, either. My parents were moving to Seattle, where The Father would be preaching at Bellevue Church of Christ, in the middle of the summer. That’s why.
But still, it was work I enjoyed, felt was important, and got paid decently enough. I had known Mitchell, the youth minister for a long time, and I would move in with my roommate and his parents in La Porte once my parents moved off to Seattle. Everything was settled, and I began my final summer as a college student driving to Baytown each morning.
We’ll save the story of mine and Kami’s first impressions of each other for another time, but she was/is gorgeous, and I wanted to go out with her.
A funny aside, not really deserving of a separate post – since it took place before Kami and I met – I was lucky to get the job. When I interviewed for the intern position, I was supposed to teach class on a Sunday morning over Christmas Break in December, 2000. Except my cousins Jeremy and Adam and I decided to take a road trip to Mexico on the Friday before. On this road trip, we got behind a truck loaded up with the dirtiest pigs you can imagine, but in the middle of this pack of piggies arose a blond, clean-as-a-whistle pig. He was the Golden Pig. We hatched a plan to drive alongside the truck, one of us jump on to the back of it, grab the Golden Pig, jump back into the car, and demand the Golden Pig give us our three rightfully-earned wishes. We also listened to Abba’s Greatest Hits start-to-finish about three times, and that’s when I was introduced to the Jayhawks. Jeremy was also concerned that we’d get to Mexico too early, and we wouldn’t be able to get in. After explaining that it wasn’t like Disney World, and that there wouldn’t be fireworks when we left, everything was okay. We also all pretty much got food poisoning. So on the day that I taught class, I was concerned that I would water my pants from the sullied tacos we all ate.
I’m not much on the theatre, but there was a play coming to Jones Hall for a few nights from London where it played on whatever their version of Broadway is (“Broadwaye,” I like to think of it) called The Woman In Black. It got good reviews, seemed creepy enough, and I wanted to go.
I especially wanted to go with Kami.
But I wasn’t sure how to ask her. It’s very important for me to let you, dear reader, know that Kami WAS NOT IN THE YOUTH GROUP. She was going to be a sophomore in college, and chaperoned a number of youth group activities, and I spent a couple of weeks with her at camp – again, that’ll come later – and really liked her. But I didn’t know how to ask her.
So of course I bought two tickets.
Going into the church secretary’s office, I asked, “Hey do you know if anyone likes the theatre?” I was rebuffed, but I said it loud enough that David – Kami’s father – overheard me.
He walked into the office, where I repeated, “Do you know anybody in the youth group who likes the theatre?” And he sat his pen down and said, “Well. My daughter is in to that sort of thing.” Which is exactly what I wanted him to say.
Slyly, I responded, “Yeah? Do you know if she’s doing anything tonight?” He goes, “You’re probably going to have to call her and ask her yourself.” Which was not exactly what I wanted him to say.
So I called, and Kami answered, and I said to her, “Hey, so –“ (I should probably stop and note that Kami isn’t here right now, so she probably has a very different point of view on how smoothly this conversation actually went) “I have two tickets to the Woman in Black at Jones Hall tonight. Do you want to go?”
I can’t remember word-for-word what she said, but it obviously went well enough that I ended up picking her up and taking her downtown to the play.
But it backfired.
Because that play was absolutely terrifying. I keep hoping that it’ll make a run back in the U.S. again, or that I’ll stumble on a door in the back of a closet where I find a pile of money, and can take Kami to London to see it again, but so far, no luck. Anyhow, the premise of the play is that Gentleman A has had this terrifying episode happen to him, and he wants to sort of exorcise this episode. So he writes up what happened, and hires an actor – Gentleman B – to act out his script. Terror ensues. It’s fantastic.
And I get completely freaked out. I can barely talk on the way home, and when I drop her off it’s probably 10:30 at night and I have to drive the 20 minutes or so back across the bridge and into La Porte. So what did my smooth self do? Called her, and made her talk to me until I got home, because I was so scared.
Anyhow, we’ll revisit the continual courting of Kami another time, but that’s how it started. By me basically trying to get her dad to ask her on a date for me.
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