I’ve been dating Crystal for 15 years.

That just seems wild to me…that 15 years ago today was our very first date.  A week before, I built up the courage to ask her out after a basketball game at Lincoln.  She patiently listened and smiled while I stuttered and fumbled and rambled through my carefully practiced proposal. (Did she help me land it and make it easy on me?  Nope.  Obviously this was before she started finishing my sentences…all of them…all the time…currently with a 65% accuracy rate.)

My buddy, Nate Andris, let me borrow his car and I wined her and dined her at Perkins (their Chicken Tender Melts were the bomb even all the way back in 1998…yes, I just said “the bomb”…very 1998).  I remember her playing with her hair and her gum a lot…so much so that somehow the two got all tangled together and we spent a good portion of our meal trying to separate them with our fingernails, ice cubes, and ultimately a pair of scissors from our waitress.  I’ve since convinced myself that gum stuck in hair = she has the hots for me.  After dinner (and a haircut) we did what any young couple does when they have no budget…we went to Toys R Us, where a kid can be a kid.  We spent a ton of time playing with toys and racing each other at Mario Kart.  She won.  I lost…pretty severely (video games have never been my strong suit).  We spent the rest of the evening just talking…in the car on the ride home and at Steak and Shake when we got back to Lincoln.  (Steak and Shake because in 1998, or 2013, the only things to do in Lincoln were to go to First Wok, to Steak and Shake, or back to school…First Wok was closed.)

Yeah, maybe it wasn’t the most impressive first date, but it was the first of many.  Just the start of really getting to know, and falling in love, with the most remarkable woman I’ve ever met.

I look back, and we’ve been on a lot of dates…a lot of walks…a lot of cookies and chocolate milk picnics…a lot of dinners and trips and movies.  We’ve lived life together for 15 years.  Those memories matter and they come back vividly…like they were last week.  And I’m still dating her…I’m still trying to woo her…win her over again and again.  I’m still writing her songs, some silly, some sweet.  I’m more in love with her now than ever, I’m more thankful for her now than ever, and I can’t (and don’t want to) imagine my life without her.

There comes a point where someone means so much to you…where they’ve had so much influence in your life that you feel like they’ve just always been with you.  You even find yourself trying to put them in your own memories from before you met them.  You do that because you love them.  And that’s how I am with Crystal.  I didn’t grow up with her, but I feel like I’ve always known her.

And there’s so much more to write about her, but tonight, I’m going to attempt to beat her at Mario Kart, eat cookies and milk with her and let her finish all my sentences.