Flashback Friday: My First Boyfriend

You all think you're in for some juicy tidbits, don't you?

All week long I've been using some questions Tam posed on her blog to inspire my blog topics for the week... with the exception, of course, of the major twin news that trumped all other stories. Quite frankly, they could have announced that the President decided to give every citizen a thousand dollars to spend willy-nilly and boost the economy, and I still would have been all about the twins.

Granted, I might have been all about buying them bigger presents, but they still would have been the main topic of conversation.

But when I opened her blog the other day and she posed a question about the identity of my first boyfriend, this picture was one of the first things that popped into my mind:

That's my dad, giving me a ring for Christmas when I was a little girl. The photo was taken in his office at the hog farm, and I truly have no idea why that would be the location he chose to put a tiny little ring on my tiny little finger... but it's another great example of the "what" mattering more than the "why" or the "how."

Because this picture embodies the character of my dad. He is a man who is filled to the brim with love. He's the guy who would get on the floor to talk to you, who would be interested in your stories and would take the opportunity to tell you how loved you are, what makes you special and what makes him proud. He's also the dad who would tease you mercilessly, tickle you until you begged for mercy and climb trees to hang homemade swings, only to get stuck trying to figure out how to climb back down. He has always been a big kid, which made being his kid a whole lot of fun.

I was obviously too little to remember being in this photo, but I can imagine the story he was telling to keep me so entranced. I can hear him, all serious, "Now, if a guy would just be extra careful with a little ring like this you won't lose it... there were pert-near 30 rings in that store, but this one was the prettiest." Because every good story dad tells has to have the phrases "if a guy would just" and "pert-near" in them somewhere.

Mostly, I love that this photo isn't taken under a perfectly lit Christmas tree or when we were all dressed up to go to midnight Mass. I love that he stopped in the middle of his day, dressed in his farm clothes... his snap-front shirt that surely had a pen and a tiny notepad in the left front pocket and his smelly jeans with a holder for his pliers on his hip... to let me know that I was his girl. He knew how to savor his moments, and I'm so glad I have the photo so I can look back and savor it, too.

All my other boyfriends had no idea what they were getting themselves into... that first boyfriend of mine simply made it impossible to measure up.