As we all know, the dating scene in high school can be either perilous or the highlight of an entire grade. In tenth grade I really began to try and find myself a girlfriend, only to fail miserably every time because of how much of a chump I was back in those days. In February of the same school year, I made it into my school's region band. This year's region band clinic already proved to be different because of a change in location to a neighboring high school in the same district. It was at this clinic that I first saw Allison. My first thoughts about Allison were that of any 15 year old adolescent: "Oh, she's cute!" On the first day of the clinic I noticed that she was wearing a Carolina Crown hoodie and my reaction was that if I wore my Carolina Crown hoodie the next day then she would notice and then we would have a reason to talk. However, as good (or bad) as that plan may have sounded, the end result was the weekend consisted of me looking at her at a distance from the safety of my chair, 20 feet away, while it seemed that she barely noticed me. She doesn't recall even seeing me at this clinic so with that we know that it was a successful weekend for me.

Moving forward two years to senior year, Allison and I were invited to participate in a weekend music clinic at Charleston Southern University to be a part of the South Carolina Youth Wind Symphony. As this was my first experience at this clinic, there was a certain degree of excitement that I had already headed to the clinic. Upon arriving to the campus and checking in, we were told that we had an hour until rehearsal. Naturally I went up to my room, laid on the bed, looked at my phone, and waited until it was time to go to the first rehearsal. The first rehearsal has begun and I'm doing my typical thing at a clinic where I'm looking at all the music in the folder and not really listening to the clinician that is speaking to us. Once I was satisfied with my short studies of the music, I looked up only to find myself in a very familiar spot. Across the podium sat none other that Allison. Not too much had changed in my thought process since two years prior as I thought to myself, "Hey, there's that cute girl that I keep seeing around at all the band events." The next day lunch rolls around and I don't know many people at the clinic so I had no one to sit and eat lunch with. I received my stock cold cut sandwich and went to look for a seat. I noticed that Allison and a friend were sitting at a table eating lunch and again my thoughts were, "Hey, how cool would it be to sit with that cute girl and her friend for lunch?" I approached their table and asked to sit with them and they kindly allowed me to sit with them. Just to recap, this is the first time that Allison and I have actually spoken to each other even though she had been on my radar for a couple of years now. The three of us engaged in small talk, like where are you from, how do you like your band program at home, and where we were planning to go to college. As insignificant as it was, and basically being the third wheel, this was huge, that cute girl that kept being at the same places that I was was cute, nice, and sociable! As the weekend continued I tried to keep sitting with them and try to become friends with the two that had taken me in no less than 24 hours ago. However, much like the region clinic from two years ago, the weekend ended with no actual ground being made and our lives virtually unaffected. I was defeated. I just knew that I needed more time, and guts......

Fast forward a few months to the start of our freshman year at USC at our first Carolina Band band camp and who do you think is one of the first people that I notice amongst the 360 person band? Allison was standing on the far wall talking with friends as I once again found myself with nobody that I knew. I was quickly surrounded by people as the baritone section in the band took me in very quickly and the experience of the Carolina Band and USC as a whole swallowed me up and Allison, for the first time at a band related function had taken a bit of a back seat. Before I knew it however she had met a dashing young saxophonist and I was once again on the outside looking in. A year later the dashing young saxophonist had left the picture and I knew that this was my chance. Except I was just too awkward to make any big moves on my own. At a party one night I notice that she was there, and for the first time, she noticed that I was there!! Allison being the fearless person that can just talk to anyone without fear of what might happen had to initiate conversation that night and we awkwardly conversed because I was stunned that this moment was happening and I wasn't comfortable with her yet so I did my normal thing in these situations and was difficult to talk to. However, it wasn't all bad, I was indeed charming enough, rather Allison was persistent enough to later message me on Facebook. About a week of conversing on messenger had gone by and she gave me her phone number. I immediately proceeded to text her except she never responded. I was confused, I didn't want to seem desperate so I didn't send a second text, and we went the whole day with no more communication. Allison and I had music theory class together and so the next day after class she confronted, except it felt more like she cornered me and asked me why I had never texted her. My response was that I had and I never got anything back. Now we were both confused, because we weren't sure what had gone wrong, only to later to find out that I had typed her number into my phone incorrectly. I fixed the problem immediately and the rest has been the happiest three years of my life!

My story of meeting Cody is much different than his... For me, it started Spring of our senior year of high school. I was attending my 3rd clinic at Charleston Southern University, but this was the first one where all of the friends I usually hung out with at clinics weren't there! Where I usually had a group of 6-8 people that were pretty consistently at all of the band and music related events I attended throughout high school, I had only one this weekend. It was a rather uneventful and kind of weird weekend without the usual gang there...

Anyways, during the first rehearsal, I was looking around the room seeing who all I knew there and figuring out who I would be spending the weekend hanging out with. My eyes stopped on this guy who was in the second row on the opposite side of me. I thought to myself, he's really cute! I wonder if we'll get to talk any this weekend! Back in high school, I wasn't one to start up conversations with cute guys I didn't know (still don't think I'm one to do that...) (also I had a boyfriend at this point) so I figured said cute guy would just become a memory...

Much to my surprise, the next day at lunch, he walked over to the table I was sitting at and, in *the most* country accent I had ever heard (this was quite a feat as I had lived in South Carolina my entire life), awkwardly said, "I don't know anyone here, can I eat lunch with you guys?" Being a decent human being and not having any top secret discussions to have with my friend, we said of course you can sit here! We spent the lunch talking about our high schools, the clinic we were attending, the previous All State clinic we had all attended (it should be noted we spent a decent portion of time discussing how Cody had never taken a lesson on clarinet before and how he was very surprised that he made All State to begin with, even if he was 24th chair [they took 24 clarinets that year...]), and our plans for the next year with college. It should be noted that looking back on this, I probably talked about how I had no clue where I wanted to go to college or probably had said some school somewhere in the Northeast because I didn't officially decide to go to USC until the very last day you could accept an acceptance.

Throughout the whole lunch experience, I was just astounded at Cody's accent and how thick it was! Being the so insightful high school senior that I was and having decided that I WOULD get out of the South for college, I wrote off this Super Southern Clarinet Player (that happened to be pretty cute) after our lunch ended.

...

The next time I really noticed Cody was during band camp of our freshman year of college at USC. I distinctly remember standing on the side of the field between the band hall and the back sideline and asking my friend who was at lunch at the clinic with Cody and I, "Hey, isn't that that super southern clarinet player from Charleston? Why is he playing a baritone?" We agreed it was in fact the guy we had eaten lunch with month ago.

...

The next and most important incident of Cody and I's paths crossing was our sophomore year of college, where we had most of our music classes together. I had broken up with the guy I had been dating all of my freshman year right before sophomore year started and had been single for a couple of months when one of my roommates and some of our friends were all talking about how cute Cody was one day. They asked me, "Don't you think Cody's pretty cute?" I thought about it and was like, yeah you know what, he is pretty cute! And I think he's single!

Later that week, we all went to a party and what do you know, Cody's there! I spent most of the night trying to talk to him but it just seemed like he wasn't that interested and it was like pulling teeth to get him to respond to anything with more than a couple of words. I didn't want to give up on it though, so the next day, I messaged him on Facebook messenger and we started talking pretty regularly on there. After about a week, I had to go on a trip where I wouldn't be able to use messenger as much as we had been so I said, here's my number, why don't we text instead? Then waited... And waited... And waited... Nothing. I gave him my number on a Saturday night, did a thing out of town on Sunday, and hadn't heard from him the whole time! So Monday rolls around and I get in to Music Theory class, where Cody usually sat next to me, and I plan on talking to him and figuring out why he never texted me, but he shows up to class a couple of minutes after it had started so we don't get to talk before, then he rushes out as soon as the class ended, no talking then either. Then Tuesday comes and we have Aural Skills together, no talking happened before class so I'm sitting here thinking he really didn't want to talk to me if he didn't text me and has ignored me for the last 2 days in person, so I leave class and find him waiting in the hallway for the elevator and say "Why didn't you text me??" He responds "I did text you! YOU never responded!" Then I pull out my phone and go to my text log and say, "I never got a text from a number I didn't have!" Then he pulls out his phone and shows me that he did in fact text... A number that was very close to mine, but not mine! I point out "You typed in my number wrong you dummy!" He responded with "No I didn't!" Then I pointed it out, typed in my actual number, then texted myself from his phone so I would have his number. The rest, they say is history...

...

Except for a couple of weeks later when we were sitting in the recital hall for our Recital/Seminar Class and we were talking about churches we went to growing up and I asked what denomination he had gone to and he said Lutheran. I grew up Lutheran as well and my best friend's dad was my Lutheran pastor in high school! So I texted Carolyn and said "So this guy I've been talking to just told me he's Lutheran!!" And her response was simple: "Husband him now!" <3