I still remember the day like it was yesterday. Temperatures outside ranging from 78 degrees to 94 degrees. An extremely hot summer day. Most normal people were staying indoors with their water bottles and their A/Cs cranked up to max cooling temps. But me -- well, I've never claimed to be normal.
Being the nature lover that I am, and a kid that grew up outdoors climbing everything from trees to ropes to fences, I still have a need to branch out there from time to time to get away from the stresses of the world. The outside world is MY world. It's where I feel most at peace. However, since I don't necessarily like socializing all that much, it's really no wonder I'd chosen the place that I had to hang out on a Sunday morning. The zoo, with all its many different-shaped creatures, most of whom are on their own fenced-in islands doing their own things never minding me one bit, seems as good a place as any to relax and de-stress for an introvert like myself. I went there expecting to find orangutans, giraffes and koalas, but what I found that day was way grander than any of those exotic creations -- I found the girl of my dreams!
Like the okapi combines the uniqueness of a giraffe with the gracefulness of a zebra, this lady mixed all the best parts I've ever loved in women into one amazingly adorable package. Her emerald green eyes allowed me access way deep into her soul, something a wannabe poet like myself can find inspiration in a thousand times over. Her sunshiny blond hair allowed me to drop my defenses while talking with her, something I normally wouldn't do with women as beautiful as she. Her fashion sense laced with practicality -- cargo pants to defend from bugs, long-sleeved shirt to protect from the sun -- told me this was a down-to-Earth girl not keen on pretentiousness. And, that smile! Oh, how I love THAT SMILE! Her smile was about a mile wide, and made all my hard knocks in life seem temporarily non-existent. It was, and still is, the most gorgeous smile I've ever witnessed in all my life.
Moreover, and thankfully for me, there was a certain familiarity with this girl. She didn't know it yet, but I'd seen her before. I'd had dreams about this very girl. Not just any random blond girl from her neck of the woods, but rather, this very same blond Neck-of-the-Woodsian. Only reason I remember this is because she'd taken my breath away before -- in dreams -- so much so that I'd woken up the previous October and written an entire piece on this unknown person. At the time, I just thought it was some unattainable reflection of a gal, an angel come to tease me amid my rapid eye movements. Never did I really believe I'd be lucky enough to meet somebody even remotely like that, let alone the actual one I'd seen in my (premonitory?) dream. I never thought myself fortunate enough, but fortunately, I was wrong.
To think, would I have ever found her if not for my unyielding stomach pushing me to visit the zoo’s restaurant for a couple of pizza slices? Would I have ever made more than mere small talk with her, if not for the jam-packed nature of that eatery allowing me to invite both her and her sister to come join in at my table? What would have become of us had I not thought to organize a bowling alley reunion later that week? The first day we met, I fixed her broken umbrella with no tools whatsoever by sacrificing the string on my camera, and then we went and fed a giant giraffe together. Three years later, I'm still here fixing and sacrificing whatever I need to, in order to keep my precious angel smiling that amazing smile of hers. She does the same for me, and I always appreciate that. We may not be feeding too many giraffes anymore, but my appetite for her is still as never-ending as a giraffe's long neck appears to be.
In closing, I'll leave you with this: We spend our entire lives trying to plot and plan everything, but sometimes life is doing the same to us. With the ten million variables that went into me finding my soulmate at a packed zoo on a random Sunday, it was a miracle the two of us ended up at the right place at the right time, but it happened... and that's the one thing I wasn't trying to plan at that time. Sometimes, the best way to bring about your future is by getting out and enjoying your present.
No comments:
Post a Comment