A Prequel to the "Farmer's Almanac" - Chapter 2

The First Date
Written by: Blake Farmer

It wasn't so much what happened on our first date...but how we got there in the first place.

Once Sing Song concluded (and we sucked, by the way), I didn't see Moriah except for in The Bean, ACU's main cafeteria. So, I had my friends. Moriah had her friends. Every once in a while I would time my trip to the ice cream counter so we would stand in line together and be forced to talk, but I was struggling here. At one point, I just bit the bullet and started going over to her table and spending a few minutes each day before I would leave for my afternoon class (aka nap).

In these brief conversations we would have, I started throwing in this line about "we need to make some Blake and Moriah time." Upon reading this, it wasn't as sneaky as perhaps I intended to be. Eventually I was walking Moriah out of the lunch room each day. This was a new thing for me. All the girls I had tried to date before were first my friends.

One day, I decided it was time to just ask her out. I walked Moriah all the way back to her dorm, but we had a third wheel, a tagalong. Our good friend thwarted my efforts. I would persist. I eventually asked her out, right there in front of the fountain drinks. I said Friday. She said, "I can do Thursday." (little did I know, she already had a date for Friday.) I did back flips all the way to my dorm.

So we went out. Hit up a small Italian restaurant. I was funny. She was pretty and smiled a lot. And I remember she had a phone that lit up when you called it. I really hadn't gotten to talk with her at any length until this time. We then went to Grace Bible Study, which is more like a Jeff Berry concert.

I dropped her off that night at Gardner Dorm. She was wearing one of her knee-length, hooded sweaters, if I remember right. I said we should do it again. She said great. Almost asked her to freshman formal. Thought she already had a date. She didn't.

So later that night, I spend a few hours on AIM, chatting it up. We had already exchanged user names.

It went down like this:

Blake1005: I meant to bring this up tonight, but I didn't want to come off too strong. I've heard you're dating someone. Is that right?

moeydawn: Actually. Yes. His name is Gill.

Blake1005: I'm not trying to squeeze into anything. I don't want to mess something up. I really didn't know, but just to let you know, I'm around. I can wait.

moeydawn: Yeah. I had fun, but I feel bad. Gill and I already have this thing going. Sorry


Little did I know, I was talking to Moriah's friend, Kenli. We would talk aplenty on AIM and flirt from afar for the rest of the year. We chatted by phone several times over the summer, and then things started to heat up.