I first met Nic in 6th grade. We were on the bus to our field trip in Washington D.C., and at this point, the Nintendo DS was extremely popular. I distinctly remember the entire bus creating a Mario Kart party so that we could race each other. I was sitting at the front of the bus because my teacher, Mr. Burger, reserved a seat for me. I get carsick easily on long rides. Somewhere along the route, we were all playing Mario Kart when this boy started asking me a question. Keep in mind, I was sitting in the window seat, and he was sitting a row in front of me and across the aisle. I remember asking him a few times what he was saying because he stumbled over his words. "Do you want to trade DS games." I didn't know him, so I said no. Weeks following this encounter, the same boy kept saying hi to me in the halls of the 6th grade building. One day, I was leaving Mr. Burger's class when Nic came up to me. I stood in the doorway and said, "Hi! My name is Emily. I know I've seen you before, but I can't remember where from. What's your name again?" Poof. He was gone. I never got an answer. Moving along to 7th grade, I was placed in French class instead of Spanish (even though my dad is a Spanish teacher and I minor in it now). Nic was in my same class, but I didn't realize it was the same kid because puberty hit him. We became really close to the point that we called each other our "French buddies" and messaged each other on Facebook. I told people that I thought he liked me because he constantly stared at me in class. Everyone denied this because he was dating somebody else. It wasn't until after we started dating when he told me that he was the same boy on the bus as my French buddy, and that he has liked me ever since.

I first met Emily on the bus to Washington DC for the sixth grade field trip. We met again in 7th grade French class where our assigned seats were near each other. The last seat change of the year we were next to each other, except the seats were assigned so that there was an empty seat between everyone. I had asked the teacher if I could sit one seat to the right. I told her that I could not see over the projector directly in front of my assigned seat. But really, I wanted to be near Em. The next summer (2011) we saw Rise of Planet of the Apes together as friends. One night that summer I was with my friend Nick Strobel at a cookout in his neighborhood. Nick and I decided to leave the event and walk the neighborhood. While we were walking, I told him that I liked Emily. He asked me if I wanted to see where she lived, and we went to see her house. When we got to the house, Emily came outside and the three of us talked for several hours. We did not realize it had been that long until Mrs. Strobel drove up worried. She said we needed to get in the car now because several people were out looking for us. Mr. Strobel was riding a bike throughout the neighborhood. We had not told anyone what we were doing or where we were going. Mr. Strobel yelled at us at home for being so careless. He followed up with, "At least it was for a girl." The next movie Emily and I saw together was The Lorax, and that was my first successful time asking her to be my girlfriend.