Our Story
In Nicole's Words | In Danny's Words | In Melanie's Words
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single Mormon in possession of married siblings will not be in want of family conspiracies to find him a good wife. How true that is, and thank goodness for me. The tale of how Melanie and I met is a tale of conspiracies of the most normal and predictable kind.
The conspiring and conniving began long ago. Some of the parties involved would claim that it all began in 2007, but the beginnings came long before that. A long time ago, my father started working as a sales representative for a small pharmaceutical company. In his new-found profession he found himself in a position to market two items of great personal interest. First he marketed his new product Xlear (pronounced ‘clear’; go figure). However, one could say that his heart was not truly in the salesmanship for Xlear, because he had a personal interest in the other item, his very eligible return missionary son.
We can say that the conspiring began here because he at least had the right idea. Somehow he must have known that his very eligible son would end up marrying a receptionist at a doctor’s office. While my father meant well, he apparently had a misguided sense of geography, because all his matchmaking efforts crashed and burned with varying levels of flare and intrigue. He was unaware of the key element in fate: that I was destined to marry a receptionist from Ohio, not Utah.
So my father began the emotional prep work on my heart, opening my mind to the idea of dating receptionists at doctor’s offices.
Fast forward to 2007. At that time I met the key conspirator in the whole scheme. Her guile and craftiness will forever be a thing of lore, because her schemes came from an entirely unexpected direction. You see, I met a young lady named Nicole Springer. We crossed paths at a Single’s Ward activity known as a “linger longer.” If you don’t see the guile and subtlety unfolding, then you may need some explaining. You see, I was thinking of asking Nicole out. As a generally universal constant, a guy can expect that fellow singles have all been barraged with conspiracies and attempted match making, enough to refrain from the practice amongst themselves. Adding to the duplicity of her plans, I took Nicole out on a date, therefore placing her safely in the group of people you should never expect to engender such conspiracies.
After that first date with Nicole, she was nice enough to be open and not string me along, a fact that I genuinely did appreciate. She let me know very kindly that she was interested in someone else and I figured that would probably be the end of the story. I failed to perceive the clever inner workings of her mind. Unbeknownst to me at the time, during our date, Nicole was thinking to herself “I am not interested in this guy, but he would be great for my sister Melanie.”
Thus the true conspiring began. I don’t recall exactly how much time passed. I became deeply engrossed in my revisions on my soon-to-be best selling novel. After finishing a revision on the novel, I bumped into Nicole at a fireside. Again we will see how my naiveté contrasts with her conniving ways. I saw her and thought “Hey maybe that guy she was interested in isn’t around. Maybe I can ask her out again.” Nicole on the other hand was thinking, “Mwa ha ha, my prey returns to my clutches. Melanie and Danny will be married before the next new moon.”
I mentioned in passing that I was working on a novel, and Nicole offered to read it. I was thinking, “Ooh she’s interested in my writing!” Nicole on the other hand was thinking, “I will put up with his blathering novel as a means to draw him in and wrap him up before passing him to Melanie.” Ok so it wasn’t quite like that, but you get the idea. She does say that she enjoyed the novel, but that is to be expected when she was reading a future international best seller.
A short while later, Nicole mentioned that she had a sister who wanted to read the novel as well. I reluctantly agreed, deciding that I could trust the sister of someone who had been so up-front with me. So Melanie and I started exchanging emails. That was January of 2009.
It quickly became obvious that Melanie and I had very compatible personalities, and I found myself kind of annoyed that I got along so well with Melanie and she lived all the way in Ohio. In some ways the distance was a good thing simply because I got to know Melanie very well without all the pressures of trying to date her getting in the way. I soon started to look forward to going home to read and respond to her emails. I hadn’t realized it then, but this marked the beginning of a very deep-seated resentment for the states of Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois and Indiana, but most particularly Nebraska.
The months kept passing and Melanie and I got to know each other pretty well. Melanie was getting close to finishing her editing on Guardian’s Tale, the afore-mentioned novel, and I was finishing up the first drafts on a new novel. Lacking a title for the novel, Melanie suggested “Purple Cow,” and that code title has stuck like gum to the bottom of a tennis shoe.
Melanie mentioned that she was coming out to Utah in August. Poor naïve Danny however had no knowledge of the scheming and conspiring that had gone on behind the scenes. Melanie’s mother had heard about this mysterious and strikingly handsome author and offered to pay half of Melanie’s plane ticket out to meet him. When her father found out about the suave, debonair literary genius in Utah he also offered to pay for the flight out. So Melanie had arranged to come out to Utah on the expectation from her parents that she would meet this dream boat from Utah.
To me, Melanie presented the trip as a chance to visit with her sister Nicole and some other friends from her days at BYU. This again demonstrates how a simple man such as me will likely never be capable of comprehending the deep inner workings of a woman’s mind. All the while I was thinking, “Well she’s coming out to Utah. I should take her out to dinner. But what if she thinks of it as just a meeting with the author she is editing for, and I am thinking of it as a date?” Fortunately that didn’t stop me from offering to take her to dinner. It did however taint the invitation due to my uncertainties, and so I asked her to join me for dinner so we could discuss Guardian’s Tale and possibly hand her a copy of my new novel (aka Purple Cow).
As her trip to Utah approached, I became very excited. There was a big boating trip in our singles ward for the weekend Melanie was going to be here. Normally, any chance to be on a boat in close proximity to water-skis will have me jumping through hoops and doing about any other trick imaginable. As this trip neared, however, my excitement for going changed and I really didn’t want to go. The night before the trip, I just felt very distinctly that I shouldn’t go on the trip. The weather was looking to be lousy, and it was looking to be hugely crowded. That however usually wouldn’t be enough to dampen my enthusiasm to indulge in a chance to be out on the lake. I just felt a very strong feeling not to go.
That happened to also be the night that Melanie sent me the last chapters of Guardian’s Tale. So I was contemplating how to diplomatically request/motivate Melanie to work a bit more promptly on my new novel. I realized that I had offered to pay her and other editors for their time. I also remembered how Melanie had been teasing me about giving her a new laptop with the novel. It occurred to me that I could actually get her a laptop for what would be the same or less than I would pay her for the work on Purple Cow. So I offered to get her a laptop in exchange for a commitment. Granted, I wasn’t thinking it would be quite the commitment I got out of her, but I will take it 8). So our first ‘date’ was when I picked her up to go buy her a laptop, and the rest is history.
11-8-2009
I have decided to acquiesce to the request for a fuller relating of this love saga. Call it typical guy-like laziness, but the original telling ended here. So if you are reading this, you are one of the lucky ones who gets the special edition with paragraphs never before read!
It would seem that others already understood our fate, as was evidenced by the way the sales associate at Best Buy obviously assumed Melanie and I were already a couple. Of course, why wouldn’t she? Who in their right mind buys a girl a laptop (no matter how cute she may be) on first making acquaintance? Granted, I felt that I already knew Melanie well enough that I certainly didn’t consider her some stranger I was just barely meeting. The funniest moment at Best Buy happened when Melanie was looking at laptop bags. The sales associate guided me over to another spot with some “designer” (aka ugly) style laptop bags and asked if Melanie is into any of the styles they had. I had no idea what kind of laptop bag she would want, but I figured she probably didn’t want one that looked like a cow (purple or not).
Setting up the laptop took the regular hour or two, but we noticed a dead pixel on the screen after all that time. So that meant that our laptop date got extended. I secretly suspect that the Best Buy employees saw our fate unfolding and wanted to give us a little help. They probably keep laptops with a specially designed dead pixel that will show up after an hour or two just for that purpose. When the sales associate handed us the laptop, I probably missed a little wink and a nod from her that would have cued me in to their help. Sadly I missed the hint and as such failed to slip the employee a fifty dollar bill.
So we ended up setting up two laptops for Melanie on that first date. I was thinking of this as a date, and as such I had to fulfill the now infamous criteria from Elder Oaks that a date must be Paid for, Planned and Paired off. Determined to make this a valid date, even by the most stringent of criteria, I refused Melanie’s conniving attempts to reduce the date-ness by offering to pay for her own lunch.
The ensuing week was truly speed dating bliss. We watched Horton Hears a Who on Monday, and I discovered that snuggling with a girl is really nice. The next date involved meeting Melanie’s parents. Melanie met my parents on the next time together.
It may appear that our first week of dating was something of a whirlwind. Actually it was, but it wasn’t just about snuggling, watching movies, kissing and meeting parents. We actually spent most of the time together just talking. It was amazing and wonderful to discover how well we communicate, and how easily we were able to talk about anything. We had really established the trust that allowed for such open communication as we were emailing, but it was wonderful to feel that continue and become something more profound.
By the time Melanie had to go back to Ohio, we were both quite taken with each other. Taking her to the airport was a real bummer. It just felt like there were so many unknowns with distance added to the equation. Fortunately we were both on Verizon. Unfortunately, my house appears to be the antithesis of all those Verizon advertisements that have the dorky guy with glasses confirming a signal every two feet. Obviously that guy never paid a visit to my house. Were it not for the longstanding history of spotty reception at my place I would have worried that Verizon had some monitoring system in place to drop calls by users who are obviously abusing the free in-network calling aspect of their plans.
Despite the unreliable reception, and a cell phone battery that rarely lasted for more than an hour, we spent hours on the phone every evening. I literally sat in my dirty clothes hamper on our first lengthy phone conversation because I didn’t have time to rearrange my bedroom furniture to get my cell phone charger somewhere other than on my dresser. So I could either stand by my dresser leaning forward so that the power cord could reach my phone, or sit on the dirty clothes hamper next to the dresser. Of course I could have moved the dirty clothes hamper, but it was soft (albeit smelly.) Besides, where would be the fun in telling this story if I hadn’t sat on the clothes hamper for four hours to talk?
Long distance relationships are hard. Um… long distance relationships are really hard. Um… long distance relationships are really really hard. Please excuse the blatant use of repetition for effect, but I just wanted to make it unequivocally clear that long distance relationships are hard. Did I mention that long distance relationships are hard?
After a few days dealing with bad phone batteries and bad phone service, I decided to do something about this whole long distance thing. We had bought plane tickets to bring Melanie out to Utah again in just over a month. I however decided I was too impatient for that and bought tickets to go to Ohio and see her in two weeks.
Tentative thoughts/plans had been to have Melanie come out to visit in the end of September (the original tickets we bought before she left), and then to get Melanie moved out to Utah in the middle of October. With just over a week before my flight out to visit Melanie, we started thinking it would be nicer to move her out to Utah sooner. So I mentioned that I could drive back with her when I came out to visit.
We both decided that we felt good about doing that, and the plans were set. This gave me the opportunity to practice my jerk-guy skills by watching football while I told my sweetie to get busy cleaning. Of course I was in Utah talking to her on the phone while she was working to pack and clean her apartment in Ohio. Fortunately, Melanie wasn’t scared away by my chauvinist male behavior.
Finally the day of my trip arrived. I will always remember how happy I felt when I first saw her step out of her car to greet me at the air port with her amazing smile and beautiful eyes. We spent the next day finishing up the packing job at her place and I got to meet her brother Nathan and his family. Nathan’s boys made some astute observations about me such as, “you have a moustache,” and “your mouth is in the center of your moustache.” They also declared that “[I] must be a strong boy.” Needless to say I got a real good laugh out of them. It was a fun albeit tiring day. The next day we drove from Columbus Ohio to Keokuck Iowa (about 10 minutes away from Nauvoo).
By now, we had essentially set the date to get married but hadn’t made anything official. I was feeling anxious to make it official, but didn’t have a ring to give her. Melanie and I had looked online, but she understandably wanted to try things on before we got anything for real. Undeterred by my lack of bling (early code in our conversations: toe ring = engagement ring, necklace = guys ring), I dragged an exhausted Melanie into Nauvoo so I could pop the question officially. I asked her outside the Nauvoo Temple with the Temple gorgeously lit up on a beautiful summer evening. We didn’t stay there too long though because the mosquitoes were eating me alive.
I am happy to report that Melanie said yes. We procured what is known as a Prairie Diamond (horseshoe nail bent into a ring) as a stand-in ring until I could buy her something more beautiful. We stayed at Nauvoo for two days, and enjoyed our time there immensely. The Nauvoo Temple was the highlight but we also really enjoyed other sites we were able to see. The only downside to the whole cross-country road trip was the added expense of booking two rooms. To lessen that sticker shock some, we booked cheaper hotels. We were both pretty happy to be out of the Super 8 in Keokuck Iowa.
The rest of the trip passed uneventfully (does any event ever happen in Nebraska?), but the long miles felt a lot less tiresome with Melanie as company. We stopped for the night in Ogalala Nebraska before finishing the last leg of the trip into Utah the next day.
So ends the tale of many wonderful firsts: my first time buying a girl a laptop, my first kiss, my first flight to Ohio, my first cross-country road trip, and my first time being the happiest man on the planet. There are a few morals to the story. First, that conniving and conspiring can often come from very unexpected sources. Second, the first moral is not necessarily a bad thing. Third, buying a woman a laptop is a very romantic gift and apparently the key to a woman’s heart. Fourth, I love Melanie very much.