1 post tagged “zeke eckert”

How old were you when you had your first "official" boyfriend or girlfriend? What was he/she like?

21! LOL. (Of course, it's just been in the past year or two that I've gotten over my outright fear of the male gender...)
I have mentioned Matt before, right? (Considering my first entry upon restarting my blog was, "The ninja is alive!"

    But in case I haven't or you've forgotten, this is Matt. He is the classic geek (computers, video games, obscure cultural references, etc.) and I find that to be absolutely freaking adorable. I like his Buddy Holly glasses and how he adjusts them whenever I compliment him on something. I like how his nose is just a tiny bit crooked because it got hit by a basketball years ago. I like how when he gets riled up about something he starts doing all these exaggerated hand motions. I like how he slugs down coffee all the time (it makes him smell pretty good, too...hugging him is like walking into a coffee shop...)
    But most of all, the guy has a very big heart. Even when we're playing Halo and he's killing me every ten seconds, I still know that on the inside he's a total sweetheart.
    I think I met Matt for the first time when I was having lunch in the college cafeteria with Zeke and Laura S. almost 2 years ago. Zeke and Matt were talking about video games. Big surprise!
    Now, he and I only said a few words to each other at that time, so I didn't know him well at all. But I have a tendency to be a very good judge of character and honestly, I knew something was different about the boy. He just seemed to be a very genuine, very nice guy. I remember thinking, "Wouldn't it be weird if I ended up dating him?" It was really strange, because while I am admittedly semi-emo, I don't look at every male as a potential boyfriend. I dismissed the thought as just being one of those random things that crosses your mind every now and then, like, "What if robots ruled Australia?" or "What if I'm the only real person on Earth and God is only a user playing a gigantic game of Sims?" or "What would be different if I were wearing a sombrero right now?" Okay, so not everyone has those kind of random thoughts, but I do, and it's a safe bet that Matthew does, too.
    Then I saw him once or twice before Thanksgiving of that year, when I had my 2nd annual "Family for a Day" hooha and Zeke brought him. We had to wait forever to get into Luby's, so the three of us had awhile to talk. Matt mentioned a video game called, "Secret of Mana," and my ears perked.
    "Did you mention, 'Secret of Mana'?"
    He had.
    OMGtehr0x0rz x infinity.
    One of my best friends as a child had a game called Secret of Mana for her SNES. I was never able to find the game anywhere else (this was pre-eBay, etc.) so I was pretty much obsessed with it whenever I went over to her house. My friend got mad at me a few times because I wouldn't stop playing it. When she got a PlayStation, her parents made her get rid of the Super Nintendo and all her games. I saved my allowance to buy it, but her parents wanted to be turds and sell it to GameStop instead.
    Anyway, I also found out that day that Matt had been homeschooled. So we had a few new things to talk about. As I sat there with my mom, Ms. Hagler, Zeke and Matt, the thought came to me again...he just seems like a really good guy.
    He began to come with Zeke to the FISHie nights, then coming even when Zeke didn't. Over the next year, I got to know him more and more and like him more and more. We were both pretty shy during the first one-on-one conversations we had with each other. Then we realized we were both weird and that we both liked that. In May, my grandmother died. For some reason, I thought about him a lot while I was in Florida that next week for the funeral. Not too long after I got back, I went to Panera Bread to meet a friend of mine, Joseph, and ran into Matthew. He told me that his grandmother had just died. We sympathized over coffee and lemonade, he drinking the former and me taking the latter.
    Before he left, I told him he could call me if he needed to talk. I had, after all, gone through the same thing recently. He hugged me for a minute, then we both went our separate ways.
    And as I drove off, it was official. I liked him.
    So yada yada yada, we hung out with friends about once a week...then yada yada yada, we started hanging out one-on-one more often...I liked him more and more...
    My parents asked me if I was interested in Matt after we'd had lunch together one day and I finally told them. Then I told Melissa right before she visited that summer. Erica was the next to find out, then Zeke, then Laura-Rose.
    "I noticed that he always called you when he wasn't sure where we were all meeting," she told me.
    Everyone told me to go ahead and tell him. To say I was scared, though, was a gross understatement. If he didn't feel anything back, it would royally screw things up in my group of friends.
    On February 5th, 2008, I got the nerve to tell him. It was an immensely awkward moment and I was so scared that I remember shaking slightly, but I saw him smile and he said he'd been thinking basically the same thing. Our first official date was on Valentine's Day and yup...that pretty much brings us up to the present.
    He's one in a million...and one of my best friends.