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I was online late one night, and I couldn't sleep. Suddenly, I got a mysterious instant message from an unknown person. He said that he had read my profile information and that we had everything in common! He had a point. We attended the same college with the same major and minor, and our interests were very similar. We talked for hours that night, and continued to do so for the following month or so. Then, this mysterious man revealed his name; Micah. He hinted around the idea of meeting in person, but I was too nervous. I had never wanted to take an online friendship offline.
Then, to my surprise, Micah spotted me one day in school and we ironically had a class at the same time right down the hall from each other. He recognized me from my picture and said that he could spot my platinum blonde hair anywhere. However, Micah was too nervous to approach me in person. I didn't believe him, until he identified what I was wearing and where he had spotted me. So, I agreed to meet him in person. I waited for him between classes, but he was running late.
I decided to give up and headed for the door, disappointed. Then, as I approached the door, I heard a deep voice say, "Laura?". In a moment I'll never forget, I looked up and saw his beautiful eyes for the first time. We went to the piano rooms in Meier Hall on Salem State College's north campus.
We had our first date on April 25, 1999. I had waited for him to ask me out for a week or two after we met. Then, we went to the movies for a traditional and formal first date (we saw "Never Been Kissed" with Drew Barrymore). We were both nervous, and when he didn't hold my hand or put his arm around me, I assumed that he had changed his mind about dating me and decided just to be friends. Through the whole movie, we later discovered, he said to himself over and over "she doesn't like me" while I thought the same thing about him. So, I was astonished when he brought me home to meet his family. No one had ever done this with me before. The most interesting part was, they had just rented (of all movies), "Gone With the Wind", which is my all time favorite. Not to mention, they had just turned it on a minute before we got to the door. We had many more coincidences like this in our relationship which made us realize that this was something special and different. Two weeks later, my 19th brithday arrived. My mother and I were leaving the house when we both stopped and said "What's that thing on the front steps?" We both squinted, and she stopped the car. "It looks like... a plant..." We both looked at each other and smiled, then raced to the front door to see what it was. There, in a huge glass vase, were a dozen multicolored roses; the biggest and most beautiful that I had ever seen!
"You'd better hold onto this one; he seems like a real catch." my mother said with her eyebrows raised. From that day on, I knew he was someone special. We became inseparable from that day on. Neither of us wanted to rush into things, so we got to know each other gradually. We had our corny sentimental moments, like the night that we found each other outside in the pouring rain (a premonition I had had in a recurring dream for months, but couldn't see who the person was). We had everything in common, and he understood me as not even my own family did. The thought that I could be in love was scary, and sure enough, Micah was feeling the same way at the same time. He told me he loved me just days later. It took me a while; I blurted it out in Russian when we went to the Esplanade on the Fourth of July (Ya Llyublu Tibia), a day on which we endured pouring rain and, later, scorching sun with only a cooler and blanket to hold us in the crowd for almost 24 hours.
Then, in August, Micah first started talking about marriage, which completely shocked me. He told me of his "master plan", as he called it, to someday make a whirlwind proposal to me that was right out of a movie, with everyone there. "Ok," I thought, "Maybe at our college graduation or something." I realized how serious he really was when he took me out to look at rings. I knew the proposal was coming sooner than I had expected.
Micah asked for my hand one night while we were having dinner at a local restaurant with my parents and I had left the table for a moment. They were ecstatic! He decided to propose on Christmas Eve (1999), and did so before my entire family after we all had finished opening presents. Luckily, the entire proposal was caught on videotape thanks to my father. It was a beautiful moment, and everyone gasped and awwed as Micah bent down on one knee and held out my ring.
