Whack

Our heads collide. “Oh, sorry, I didn’t realize you were there,” I say without looking up to see who I ran into.

“It’s okay; I was distracted by my phone,” a sweet voice replies.

We pick up our things and walk into class together. “What the heck,” I think to myself. “The first day of class, and I’ve already crashed into someone.” I sit down in an empty seat on the other side of the classroom from the girl I just bumped into. I don’t want to embarrass myself any more than I already have. I take out a notebook and a writing utensil, prepared to start learning. The bell rings out from the loudspeakers to start class.

“Alrighty, welcome to class…” I’m already starting to drown out the teacher's voice. All I can focus on is the collision.

From that day forward, I try my best to not embarrass myself again by bumping into the girl in my class. After a few weeks of being able to choose our seats, the teacher announces that we will be working on a project with someone else in the class and that they will choose our partners. “Shoot,” I mutter under my breath quietly. I really don’t want to be in the group with the girl I bumped into.

The teacher starts to read off the names of the groups, pointing to where they would be sitting. “Wilbert,” I perk up from my slump hearing the teacher call my name. “And Daisy. You’ll be sitting here,” the teacher said pointing to a desk in the back of the room.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” I think to myself. The one person in the class I didn’t want to be paired up with is who I am paired up with. I go to my seat and avoid making eye contact with her. I don’t even want to talk to her. I feel my anxiety start to perk up. I can’t even look in her direction.

For the next few weeks, we work together on the project. As the project progresses, I start to feel myself coming out of my shell working with her. I feel comfortable with Daisy. She’s a familiar face that I see in the halls, in class, at lunch. But, at the same time, I feel something in the pit of my stomach. I’m nervous around her, almost all the time. My head can’t think straight. The wheels of doom keep spinning in my head. Even though the wheels keep moving, I feel stuck. I feel like I’m being held down by a force.

One day, while working on the project, she turns to me and says something, but I’m not fully paying attention. “Sorry, what did you say?” I ask her.

“Oh, nothing,” Daisy responds shyly, turning away from me.

My head starts to spin again. “How do I always mess this up?” I think to myself. “Every single time.”

“The wheels didn’t stop there; they kept on leading me closer and closer to the edge of the cliff,” I tell my audience. “I’ll never forget that feeling. That feeling of waiting for an aftershock.”

The next day, Daisy turns to me, this time smiling. “Just curious, would you want to grab lunch together?” Daisy asks me with a smile on her face.

My heart skips a beat; I could feel my cheeks start to turn red. All of the anxiety in my stomach starts to rise to my throat. I feel my brain starting to spin. “I have one chance to make this go right,” I think in my head. The thought of how everything played out yesterday crosses my mind. I take a breath, swallow my doubt, and answer honestly. “Sure,” I happily reply. “I’d love to eat lunch with you.” She smiled and then went back to working on our presentation together. All of my anxiety starts to sink. I didn’t panic. I didn’t break down in tears. I held myself together, finally.

The bell rings to signal the end of class. We grab our things and walk out of the classroom together. “Where to?” I ask Daisy.

“Wherever you want to go, Wilbert,” Daisy answers. I smile at her response. We start walking towards the courtyard.

“We talked for a while during that lunch,” I tell my audience. “I remember when we started dating, we spent all of our time together. We were inseparable.”

“Do you want to hang out tomorrow?” I ask her. “We could bake Christmas cookies.”

“Yes, I love Christmas, I love cookies, and I love you,” she replies.

My heart skips a beat. This time, the feeling of the impending aftershock is different. More relaxed and more calm. The wheels in my brain slow down, for the first time in a while. I can think clearly, but deep down, the impending doom feeling is still creeping into my thoughts. 

“I love you too,” I respond to her for the first time.

I continue telling the story to my audience, “The next day, she came over. We went straight to the kitchen to make cookies. We put on Christmas music and danced while the cookies baked in the oven.”

“But what happened after?” A small voice responds from my crowd.

“Yeah, I wanna know too!” Another small voice responds.

“Well, we went to college and lived in different apartments. After college, we bought a house and moved in together. We started a family, and raised them in the same house that you’re in now.” I answer.

I look up from my gaze towards the floor and realize that the whole family was gathered around the fireplace where I was parked in my reclining chair. All of my children were on the couch, and all of my grandchildren were sitting on the floor, listening to my story. 

“Does that answer your question about how I and Grandma met?” I ask my granddaughter, Rose.

“Yes, yes it does,” she responds.