"Muffins"

For the first time in three months, I was happy again. Three months of beating myself up for being a coward. For being a moron. All that dissipated when I saw her. The Girl the Blue Hoodie. The mysterious new "girl of my dreams" (you'll probably hear that phrase a lot in the coming posts.) In a blink of an eye, I was over it all. I no longer dwelt on my screw-up with Erin. All I could think about now was finding the identity of the Girl in the Blue Hoodie.

     I first met her at Camp Heritage (a Seventh-Day Adventist youth summer camp) during a game of "Cat and Mouse." And after that, I devoted the rest of that weekend to my own game of Cat and Mouse. I the cat and she the mouse. (You know what? I just realized how creepy that sounded.) Let me rephrase that: I devoted the rest of that weekend to "Operation Get-the-Girl 2?" Ahhh yes, that's better.

     I kept an eye out for her as the weekend's festivities rolled on. I looked and looked, but never once saw a glimpse of her. I didn't see her again until the final night. The final day they showed a movie for all of the campers. It was called, "Facing the Giants" (a movie about a highschool football team.) But I wasn't paying attention to the movie, because as I sat down next to my friend Tommy (another camper) I saw, sitting next to us, The Girl in the Blue Hoodie. My heart stopped. Now was my chance. My chance to truly meet the blue-hooded girl.

     Tommy was already talking to her and introduced me and we all hit it off right away. The Girl in the Blue Hoodie's name was Kayla and we talked through the whole movie. We talked about our different likes and dislikes, during which I found out that Kayla loved muffins. I don't think I stress that enough. She LOVED muffins with a burning passion that consumed her soul. I remembered having seen a basket of muffins by the popcorn earlier, so I sneaked off to get one. I crept back and gently laid the muffin by her hand. I don't know if she ever noticed it and ate it or not, but after that, I called her "Muffins."

     After the movie ended and we all had to return to our cabins, Kayla made us swear that we'd all see each other again. As I began to say, "I swear!" a little piece of popcorn flew out of my mouth. I looked down at the popcorn kernel  and back up at my new friend and said, "I swear on the popcorn kernel of truth!" Let me tell you, the popcorn kernel of truth is binding! I was the only one between Tommy and me to keep that promise.

     It was a promise I was happy to keep, too. I remember leaving the building and heading back to the cabin and thinking to myself, "Someday, I'm going to marry that girl. And I'll have the best 'how I met your mother story ever!'" Little did I know how misguided I was. . .