The First Encounter

I put Channing down at 7 pm tonight. He wanted to go down at 6 and kept rubbing his eyes. He was extra fussy and pleading for sleep but rather my selfishness won as I pushed to keep him up as long as possible as I did not want to wake up at 6 am tomorrow. I curled into bed a little after 7 pulling the comforter over my ears to drown out the sound of the fan. I listed off the things in my head I have/need/want to do tomorrow hoping to clear my head and be able to fall asleep. My ears pulsated, head throbbed, ears ached, and throat feeling raw as the cool air ran past it. I have a bad head cold that I am pretty sure is turning into something far worse. As I desperately tried to clear my head all I could think about was the event 4 years ago that altered the eternities; the day I met Josh. Perhaps it is because my brother-in-law is at a Jack Johnson concert right now sitting in the grass section, like Josh and I did twice together at the Waikiki shell for Kokua Festival in Honolulu, that I am feeling so reminiscent . Who knows, the point is, I CANNOT CLEAR MY HEAD!

So I find this wrestles night the perfect time to write down these memories while I still can recall most of it.

September 30th, 2006 I went to Waimea Bay with some friends: Melody, Diana, Trevor, Bo, Ashley, and I cannot remember who else. The waves were the biggest I had ever seen them there previous to that occasion and since. Ashley in our group got in the water and barely made it out. As she attempted for the half-dozenth time to work her way out of the waves eating her alive, weak and exhausted, she scrambled to her legs. Her suit, body, and hair were mangled with sand. I watched her work her way up the sand hill just to collapse next to me thinking, "Good thing the lifeguard didn't have to go after her--that would be just embarrassing!" I watched the waves so much bigger than me in awe. The ocean is my "out of the box" place, if you will.

After some time I noticed a large group of people had positioned themselves to my right, the church tower side of Waimea. I watched them laughing and thinking they were ridiculous as they played games right at the waters edge; one of the games I would later find out was called, "don't die." Appropriate title... idiots. I recognized one of the guys in the group. He had introduced himself the week earlier to me in the Seasider saying, "Hey, I keep seeing you around campus and thought I should introduce myself. My name is Scott Hyde." Truth be told I had not recalled seeing him around campus but I love people and especially meeting new people so I introduced myself.

However, this particular day at the beach someone else caught my eye. The first thing I noticed was his impeccable back. Yes, he was one of the lucky few blessed with a V shaped toned beautiful back. He also had a scruffy face, totally my type, and always smiling. I pointed him out to Diana and after a while we, well I, decided that we should go say hi. After all, i had already met Scott and he would be able to introduce me to everyone else. More importantly, he could introduced me to "hot back guy". Diana and I made our way over. I said hi to Scott and introduced myself to the rest. Everyone else in the small group, that had branched off from the larger group, introduced themselves. "Josh" was his name. He beamed with this infectious smile. His blue eyes were piercing and his dimples adorable. He was no Monte, he looked great even up close.

I let them know about our ward BBQ at Hukilau beach but they said they were going to Lost premiere in Honolulu. Attempting to nudge them to go to the BBQ I told them there was free food. They were all packing up and some of the group already at their cars so we parted. But I had a name--"Josh". Hot back guy's name was Josh.

We went directly to the ward BBQ. I had a good time but was eyeing for them the whole time. They did not come. Bummer. We decided to go to the Lost premiere, why not right? Saturday night and going "into town" as we would say. We had an awesome time in the car drive down, I totally was hoping that hot back guy named Josh would be there but was not going to let that alter the awesomeness of the night. I was in Hawaii to have a great time and date a lot! He was merely one of the "potentials".

We walked down Waikiki and the big screen was up. I remembered watching "Jungle Book" at that same location on the beach my senior year of High School while vacationing in Hawaii with my parents and one of my very best friends Stephanie. All the cast was there. People were so stoked... Lost fans are crazy hard core. Having never watched the show before I remember thinking, "Hey there is the pretty girl, hot guy, and bald dude from the show." People were taking pictures with them and super happy to be there. As one might imagine the beach was PACKED! So we decided to sit on the back side of the screen. After all, it all looked the same. The words were just backwards for the credits, but whatever.

About half way through the episode this chick right in front of me turned around and was starring at me. I could feel her squinting eyes evaluating me. She said, "Hey, didn't I meet you last week in relief society?" It took me back a second but then recognized her, Leticia. We struck up a short conversation as we watched Lost. I peered down the line of people she was with and OH MY GOSH... hot back guy! I nudged one of my friends and said, "Hey that's him! That is the guy from the beach... wait is it?" He was laying on the ground snuggling with a chick who the friend later professed her disgust for. I couldn't decide if it was him or not but spent the remainder of the episode slyly looking in the corner of my eyes to see if it was him.

The show ended and we all slowly made our way to our feet. I noticed another girl in the group. I had met her a month or two previous to moving to Hawaii in Utah at a department store at the MAC counter. Kailee, the chicks name, was working and overheard me talking to my sister Heather about going to BYU-Hawaii. She pulled me aside and said she was moving there fall semester also but was not going to school. She was being all awesomely discreet about it because she had not yet told her work. Anyhow, we started talking and sure enough it was hot back guy Josh.

Someone at the piermere was handing out freezed dried ice cream which we ate and made our way down Waikiki as a large conglomerated group. I noticed another girl paying hot back guy, Josh, particularly a lot of attention. I asked Kailee if she knew if they had a thing going on. She informed me that the chick had made it obvious that she was interested but he was not. He was free game! So thus let the gaming begin.



We sat down on the sidewalk waiting for "Basketball Man" next showing. I am sure we waited 40 minutes for the life changing show. We laughed a lot and enjoyed the anticlimactic ending.





Undecided about what to do next we all made our way into the International Marketplace. Most of the group had gone upstairs to a club, I had gone into the ABC Store. "Hot back guy Josh", you may as well hyphenate the name, was standing outside the store talking with a few other people from the group. He was carrying ALL the blanket that the group had been sitting on. I made my way over to handful of people talking. He just kept laughing that hot infectious laugh with those big adorable dimples.
Everyone someone made it back to us and the decision was made to go to Eggs and Things, a 24 hour breakfast place.

We were closer to their car than ours so we all piled up into Nikki/Jada's van. They dropped us off at our car as the plan was to follow them to Eggs and Things. On the way the van died. We pulled over to the side of the road. I got out and within a few short seconds/minutes was joined by hot-back-guy-Josh. I have no idea what we talked about. We were just smiling and giggling about the whole situation which we later found out ticked some people off. But the chemistry was undoubtedly there.



Some neighbor lady on the street offered for them to push the van onto her property just for the night. So we said goodbye. I thought of him during the drive home.

The following day, Sunday October 1st was General Conference. It was hot-back-guy-Josh's roommate, Kolin's, birthday. I made brownies as an excuse to go over to the house. Plus I figured if things did not work out with hot-back-guy there was other roommates I could strike it up with.

When the door was opened I saw hot-back-guy-Josh was on the couch with the girl he had been snuggling with the night before. He was smiling from ear to ear. I said happy birthday and made my way back down to the end of the point.

Monday October 2nd I knew our ward was having FHE, family home evening, at the church building. It is weird to call it that. It was a classroom-ish like place. I went hoping that the guys would show up. I coyly watched the door as I saw each shadow approach the door. They didn't come, but the girls that they were at Waikiki with, Kailee, etc. came. As the activity was wrapping up Kailee and the girls invited me to go to the a birthday party. They were not sure who's house it was going to be out because of landlord situations. So I invited them to have it at ours--our landlord lived in Kailua. We got back to the end of the point, Country Club, and people started piling in. However, the guys took their sweet time.

I had been back in my bedroom with a group showing them how my WALL had fallen out of my bedroom and impressing them with photos when hot-back-guy-Josh came in with his infectious smile. Ah, a sigh of relief. He had come. We worked our way back into the kitchen to find all the root beer floats had been consumed and the birthday girl never showed up. There was 20-ish of us that filled the living room. We played games. Hot-back-guy-Josh had got out of the game and shortly after I did too. I walked out to the back porch to get a fresh breath of air. I came back in and sat on the white weird-ish coffee table pushed to the side of the room to make way for the games. I sat right next to him. It got later in the night when everyone started to leave. Leticia, just haning in Hawaii for a month or two, or until she ran out of money, asked to sleep on our daybed in the front room where we had been playing games. I didn't care so she curled up.

Josh and I just kept talking. You could tell his roommates were not sure if they should stay or leave. They lingered for a little while and the last one made his way out. But hot-back-guy-Josh and I just kept talking. I went back at some point and took out my contacts and put on my glasses. We laid on the floor talking as I was nearly delirious. He kept telling me things about his mission, BYU-Provo, and BYU-Hawaii. I was so confused. I could not figure out in what order he did what. I was so tired and he just giggled and teased me about having explained in a half dozen times. At some point he leaned over me as I laid in the center of the floor, lifted my glasses, and said, "I don't mean this to be a line or anything but what color are your eyes? They are beautiful." I was dying inside! How cute/funny/adorable was this guy hu?! I just wanted him to stop talking and kiss me.

As the hours went on I pointed out that the sky was getting lighter. Mind you, Leticia is sound asleep on the daybed. We walked through the backyard onto the lava peninsula and watched the sunrise and kept talking. I knew there was no chance I was going to my political philospphy course that morning or my religion class. We listened to the waves crashing and at some point realized we should part. We went into the house to see it was 10:00 am, totally missed my classes. I later found out that hot-back-guy-Josh didn't even have school or work Tuesday/Thursdays. Lucky!

In an exhausted daze I got ready for work and then took a nap on the beach with my roommate Mandy. I got a text from hot-back-guy-Josh telling me that I should see him right now. He was crammed into the back of a hatchback of a car with a surfboard laying on him on his way for a little surf session. He had taken a nap when he got home. Auh, lucky.

And I never saw him again--just kidding. I think that is enough for tonight.

P.S. I have found lots of mistakes and am too tired to fix them tonight. Sorry english majors--deal with it :(

**I would like to thank Facebook for the pictures and the people that I stole them from