I've known Brady for a really long time. As in long time, we went to sixth grade, all of junior high, and all of high school together. We grew up in the same city, stake, and were mutual acquaintances. We had classes together throughout the years, and talked together here and there, but we never were actual close friends. But senior year changed that.
We had one class together. One class out of eight classes. Sports Medicine. I still consider that to be one of the funnest classes I took senior year. I took it for one reason.....to have a class with my best friend Brooklyn. I had no intention of ever going into a medical profession after high school. But the class was well worth all the hard work....not only did I learn how to tape my sprained ankles and take care of my rugby injuries, I started talking to Brady Webb who was also in that class.
The class was a year long class. So every other day, we'd have sports med and we'd look at gross injury pictures, we'd tape ankles, arms, and wrists, and we'd dissect gross things. The day we dissected cow hearts was probably the worst day in that class for me. I wanted to throw up.
I sat in the back, middle row of the class. Right next to Brooklyn and a few other friends. Brady sat in the back, on the right sided rows of the classroom, next to his friends. When we weren't watching movies (more like sleeping during movies) we were finishing notes or worksheets, and when we were done with that we'd play cards....and by that i mean really intense, shouting games of slap jack.
The game was called Egyptian Rat's Crew. Probably the best game ever. But also, probably the worst game to ever play in the middle of class. Our teacher would get mad when we got too rowdy. We started inviting whoever wanted to play into our group of crazy card players. Brady and his friends just happened to be a couple of those people who would join us occasionally. And occasionally we would talk, laugh, and have a good time hanging out during class with each other. One time, i ever wrapped Brady's elbow, because I had no one else's elbow to wrap.
For the time being we had just casually been talking to each other every once in awhile. Until January. Preference was coming up. That's the girl's choice formal dance at my high school. It was the third weekend in January, and it was January 4th, and I still didn't have a date. I needed to find a date. But I just wasn't seriously interested in anyone at that time. I didn't know who to ask, and that was a scary thing. I had the dress, I had the friends to go with, I just didn't have a man.
On January 4th, a vital conversation occurred. One conversation, that could have altered the way things happened in a very bad way, if this conversation didn't occur. I was talking with CaBree Robinson in seminary when I discovered who to ask to preference. CaBree is Brady's stepsister, I've known her for years too, just casual friends, just like how I knew Brady.This is how it went:
Me: "Cabes, who are you going to preference with?"
CaBree: "I'm going with Matt Olson, who are you going with?"
Me: "I have no idea! I'm freaking out because I don't know who to ask. Is Brady going?"
CaBree: "No he's not, you should ask him!"
Me: "I should! That would be so fun! I'll have to think about it!"
Then later that night, at eight thirty, I found myself running to the store with my girlfriends, all packed into my mom's SUV, to get the needed things to ask out our dates. In Utah, it's crazy how you ask someone out. You don't ask in person. You have to come up with a creative way to ask them. So before I knew it, just out of spontaneity, I was asking Brady to the dance.
I grabbed starbust candies, paper, and a pen. Found myself at the balloon counter throwing things in the balloons then filling them up. All I remember is writing on the paper "Brady, the STARS will BURST if you go to preference with me!". I tore the paper up into strips, wrote a different letter of my name on a starburst, put them into balloons and then filled them up with helium. All he had to do was pop the balloons, assemble the riddle, and then get all the letters lined up correctly to figure out who had asked him to the dance.
We drove to Brady's house, speedily trying to get back in time for curfews, good thing he lived close by to my house, and then came the tricky part. How was I supposed to dump these balloons on his porch and door-bell ditch him, and get away without being seen, with a large cast on my left foot? I had foot surgery four days earlier! I had seriously just gotten off the drugs, that day. Good thing, considering the driving and all. haha! Brooklyn would have to do it for me. What a good best friend she was. So while she ran to the doorstep, we all hid in the car around the corner.
She came speedily back to the car, we saw the door open, and then we sped off into the darkness of the night. The deed was done. I had asked Brady Webb out. I was thrilled! Now, all I had to do was wait for him to answer me. I knew one thing about that night.....it would at least be a fun date. Regardless of what happened after the date, it would be a fun night to remember, I just didn't know that day, that it would lead into something so much bigger and so much more peachy than anything else i'd ever experience.
