You say it's your birthday

Twelve years ago, the Super Bowl had been moved to February because of 9-11. In fact it had been moved to my birthday. Kent and I had started dating a couple of weeks earlier after my refusal to do so for three years, but he’d made it clear that this wasn’t an exclusive relationship. Fair enough, I had made him wait for a very long time so it wasn’t unreasonable that he was a little gun shy.

We’d been invited to a Super Bowl party and Kent had just picked me up to head over to the party. (We were both still in full courtship behaviors, both going to things maybe we didn’t really like to do or doing all those little things that go along with courtships. That’s why I was going to this party as I find football deadly dull.)

Anyway, we were chit chatting in the car, and he says to me “I need to tell you something really quickly before we get there.” Oh boy, maybe he realized he didn’t want to date me after all . . . No, that wasn’t it at all. In fact, he said, he had made the decision that he would date only me because he realized he wouldn’t find out whether this relationship was what he wanted if he didn’t do that. He made it clear he wasn’t asking or pressuring me to do the same, he just wanted me to know where he stood.

What he didn’t know at the time was that I was already dating only him. Having overcome the initial, crippling fear of starting a relationship with him, I was all in. I couldn’t conceive of dating around while I figured out if this was indeed the one for me. So you better believe I was smiling slightly on the outside and doing fist pumps on the inside. That was the best birthday and Super Bowl ever.

No, I don't know who played, let alone which team won. Who cares? I won!