One of my favorite stories to tell...

How I met my husband...

The first time Mr. Darling and I met was at my best friend's wedding.... and he was the biggest JERK I had ever met!

There is a lot to that part of the story that we won't get into... lets just say we were fresh out of college, possibly had a little too much to drink that weekend, and, okay I"ll admit it, a little immature.

Oh, and there was that whole, we were suppose to be "set up" misunderstanding that started it all, but that is beside the point.

Okay fine, I'll tell you... basically I had never been "set up" before and I thought there was suppose to be some kind of formal statement on the matter. Since there wasn't, I assumed he wasn't interested - that he had given the secret signal - and the whole thing had been called off. Since we were at a little party anyway, I went on my way and started flirting with some one else. Apparently, that made me the biggest WITCH he had ever met. It was just a simple misunderstanding.

The weekend went downhill from there. He was hitting on my engaged friend who was too drunk to remember she was engaged. I however, did remember and made it very clear he should leave her alone, but she she didn't seem to mind, and since he was getting nowhere with me, he had no desire to stop. I said some horrible things, he said some horrible things... Let's just say, it was bad. (Oh, and there may or may not have been skinny dipping that night. I don't know. It's all kind of fuzzy.)

Fast forward three years. My best friend Amy and her husband James move to Hawaii at the request of the Navy. Did I mention that Mr. Darling was roommates with James in college? (Which is why he was in the wedding three years before.) When Amy and James arrived in Hawaii she was 6 months pregnant, and James would be shipping out to the Gulf for what we end up being 10 months. It just so happened that Mr. Darling, also in the Navy, was already stationed in Hawaii. As he was the only person they knew, James recruited him to look after his wife and 16 month old daughter. (He would eventually be Amy's birth partner for the birth of James and Amy's son, 3 months later.)

When Amy told me Mr. Darling would be hanging around, the first thing out of my mouth was, "I cannot believe you are going to let that boy around your daughter!" She claimed since she had no other options, I needed to be supportive. So I tried not to say anything too negative about the jerk.

One day I called to check on her and he was there. I half-jokingly said, "Well, you can tell him that I certainly do NOT say hi!" She generously relayed the message without the half-jokingly tone and he immediately responding with, "Tell her to kiss my ass!" My immediate reactions, "See, I told you he was a jerk... he's still a JERK!

Obviously, our feeling for each other had not changed much... after three years there was still a profound hatred between us.

Can you believe we would be married less than 6 months later...?

Stayed tuned for Part II. (How we went from the aforementioned hatred, to head over heels in love... in less than 2 week.)