That's a Birthday Present?

Before I found my wonderful husband, I had the opportunity to date a few...interesting people. I'm really glad that I did because it means that I can tell funny stories about them now.

I wasn't allowed to date until I was sixteen years old. As a mother of a fourteen year old, I can see that my parents were very wise, and I intend to keep with that tradition, except that I think I might change the rule to something even more reasonable. Like thirty. Either way, while I didn't date, I DID go to dances, and that's where I met Brad. He was seventeen, I was fourteen, and it was very flattering getting the attention of a much older man. He got my phone number and called me. A lot. Sometimes every day. He called me his "vitamin J". He asked me out, and I turned him down. He still called. He still asked me out. I wasn't happy about it, but I didn't really know what to do about it either.

The final straw came on my fifteenth birthday. He called and invited himself over because he said he had a present for me. Presents are good. You can't go wrong with presents. I agreed that he could come. He came in with a HUGE box. I was envisioning wonderful things like giant stuffed Teddy Bears as I opened my present. Inside there were multiple gifts- some candy, a record single of "Our Song", some science fiction books he found used. But the BIG gift, the thing he was clearly excited to give me, was two kitchen towels and ... a roasting pan- one of those black speckled ones with two handles and a lid. He even wrote me a story explaining why the roasting pan would be so significant- a reason I can't remember now. I looked at the roasting pan and politely thanked him. It was a perfectly nice roasting pan, but not something that I could appreciate as a fifteen year old.

Brad kept calling, and I finally got the courage to tell him that I wasn't going to date him, and I wanted him to stop calling me. Even THEN, it took moving away and and getting a boyfriend to finally get him out of my life completely. I kept the roasting pan. I used it a couple of times in college, then donated it after I got other pans for my wedding. It goes on record as the strangest gift I ever received.

He WASN'T the strangest boy I ever dated.