The first "I love you"

At this point I would have told you about our first kiss. Sadly, our first kiss was not much to brag about. I won't go into detail, but just say that our second was much more enjoyable.

Andy and I were so enamored with each other and so much in lurve, that we celebrated every.single.month anniversary during our first year of dating bliss. So like every month previously, on our fifth month we went out to a nice dinner (maybe a movie too, I don't really remember at this point), and then Andy drove me home.

Let me interject here that Andy has an obsession with big souped up cars. In particular Jeeps and at the time he was sporting at 1992 Jeep Wrangler Sahara Edition with a lovely, albeit loud, flowmaster muffler. His Nana loved it. I did not. To add to the loudness of the muffler there was the stereo that had to be cranked up in order to hear the music over the rumble of the flowmaster. Needless to say, conversation at a regular octave was not possible.

So we pulled up in my driveway and we were giving goodnight smooches, but Andy had not shut off the engine. He generally didn't. I guess because he usually just drove right away and the car made more noise when it was started than when it was just sitting idle.

I don't remember everything that was said, but Andy said that he loved me. Telling someone you love them is a very tender moment and not meant to be shouted over a car muffler. He wasn't shouting, and I barely heard him, but I did, in fact, hear him. Of course I said it right back, but to this day Andy swears that I didn't reciprocate his feelings until a day later. I'm a soft spoken person and when using a normal voice I'm not very loud. So you can imagine that over all that extra noise I am difficult to hear. And since I didn't want to shout, "I LOVE YOU TOO!!!!!!!" Andy simply didn't hear me.

I did think he acted weired after that, but it never occurred to me that he never heard my response. The confusion was cleared up the next day, though I'm not sure he believes that I actually did validate him that night.

Ever since then I refuse to have a conversation with him in a car if I have to strain my vocal cords in any way. It's either the radio or me babe.