stranger than fiction

Remember this post, about my high school crush, the boy whose name adorned my flute case and who I secretly hoped had married an obese controlling witch? (If you haven't read it before make ABSOLUTELY SURE you read the comments....)

Well, the Dirty Little Secrets Portraiture and Wedding workshops were this past Sunday, and in one of those truth is invariably stranger than fiction moments, Cute Boy Tyler contacted me and said he and his wife and children were making an impromptu visit to Edmonton, would I like to get together for coffee and could I maybe squeeze in some pictures? As luck would have it, I had been having a hard time getting a group together for models, and I asked (hopefully but with much doubt) if he would be willing to participate. I said all it would cost him is a Tim Horton's coffee and the 1/2 hour between workshops to visit... and they said yes.

D. is not only the opposite of what I had maliciously hoped for in a wife for Tyler, she is positively stunning with exactly the type of personality that makes you kind of fall in love with her, too, and not hate your high school crush so much for making you suffer all kinds of unrequited love. And their children are completely lovable - M. has the BLUEST eyes and REDDEST hair I've ever seen not digitally built, and R. reminded me so much of my own boys when they were that age (three... and a half....) it was frightening. This evening when I sent off the proofs I regretfully informed Cute Boy that he's too old for me now - I like R. better... though Serejane, after betrothing herself to Jasonpoop on top of having been betrothed to Mikael by me and Billie years ago already, has decided to add R. to the mix. My sweet little polygamist Caged Ponies with Wings and Sparkle Sneezes and Pink Hearts-Not-in-their-Bums Powers daughter ~sigh~

In a very strange twist of fate, the morning of the workshop I got a message from one of the guys I used to work at camp with, the same camp where I met my beloved hubby at, informing me that one of our mutual acquaintances had passed away from a fatal heart attack attributed to an undiagnosed congenital heart defect. This particular acquaintance was my first roommate when I moved out of my Mom's house, highschool sweetheart, future husband and subsequent divorcee to one of the aforementioned gaggle of girlfriends of back in the day.

I remember sitting on the balcony with R.N. on one of the first nights we lived there. We had hauled out his mattress pad and were sitting in our sleeping bags, planning to sleep out in hte fresh air, smoking Export A gold pack and discussing our future dreams. He was going to marry C., and be a Big Rock Star. I was going to graduate high school and be a Famous Artist. We talked about how cool it would be for he and I to hook up with the whole posse in France where he would be touring with his hugely successful band and I would be selling my paintings for disgusting amounts of money... shortly after which he took to filling our apartment with strange people at all hours of the day or night, handing out keys to whomever wanted one so they had a place to do liquid lunch conveniently close to the school, and eventually swiping the guitar my Auntie had given me. After only a month of that nonsense I moved out so I could actually ~finish high school~

Life always finds a way to come full-circle. I was torn as to whether I should attend the service or not. To be completely honest, shocked as I was at someone our age passing an untimely and unexpected death, there was no love lost there. I could have gone out of respect, but more than anything I was plain curious to see how many high school acquaintances I'd run into, which in my opinion certainly was not an appropriate reason to go. So instead of an ending, I chose a beginning of a new face-to-face friendship with the Cute Boy with the Cute Wife and Cute Kids, who (albeit unknowlingly because I was such a chicken sh*t) lost me to my even Cuter Husband. (Really, I'd had an even more secret crush on Bill for 5 years before meeting Cute Boy so there wasn't really any competition when you factor in fate...)

Thank you TieDye for coming out. I am really looking forward to your next trip through town so we can have an actual picnic with both of our families and see if we should start pre-planing a trousseau for our kids... and you still owe me a coffee...