Love at first sight

Joey and I first met when we moved into houses next door to each other on Summit Street our junior year here at Kent. We liked each other right off the bat, but I was weary about dating him because he was leaving to study in Italy the next semester. However, when he left in January, it didn’t take me long to realize that I really wanted to be with him. We spent a long time talking on the phone (despite the $2 a minute charges), and he finally asked me to come visit him for spring break. I wasn’t even in Florence for a day before he asked me to be his girlfriend. We have been together for almost 2 years now, and we will always have the special story of the start of our relationship being in Florence, the most romantic place in the world (besides Summit Street, of course).

-Laura Houck, senior nutrition major

My husband has never been very romantic. He’s always wondered why we should celebrate Valentine’s Day. That’s what our anniversary is for. Well, a couple of years ago, I had told him I wanted flowers for Valentine’s and pestered him for about two weeks beforehand. I told him he could go to the grocery store and get flowers for crying out loud! He works at our local school, and one of the student organizations there has an annual fundraiser selling carnations for V-Day. Did I get carnations that Valentine’s Day? No. I got the carnations they didn’t sell and were going to throw out on the day after! It could have been worse, though. When we were first married, he worked for our township, and part of his job was caring for the cemetery. At least he never brought home leftover flowers from there!

-Lori Michael, word processing operator, Honors College

It was the first day of fall semester 2008 and after classes, my best friend Kate and I decided to visit our friend from high school, Nate. I will always remember this day because it was the first time I met his roommate, Tim. Nate introduced Kate and I by saying “These are my friends Keri and Kate. I have no doubt that you’ll be dating one of them this year.” I laughed at this at the time, probably because Tim looked like he couldn’t care less and besides, I had liked Nate for a long time.

Over the next few months, as I really got to know Tim, he instantly became my best friend and “go-to” guy. He was always there for me when I was stressed about school and when things with Nate didn’t work out. Every time I came over, if I didn’t see him, I would go crazy. The funny thing is, I didn’t know why. I really just thought of him as my best friend and so I put every thought of dating him out of my mind. One day, November 20th to be exact, I was walking to History of Costume when I ran into Tim. When he saw me, his face lit up, as I had noticed it always did when he said “Hey Keri.” He told me that all of our friends were hanging out that night and he wanted me to join them. I promised to come after game night at my sorority house and when I got there, Kate told me that Tim had been asking about me all night and that she thought we should go out. I shrugged off her comment and made everyone play Tabletopics with me, a game of questions used to start great conversations. During the course of the game, I found out many things about Tim that made me like him even more, such as if he could live in another country, he would live in France, because it is absolutely beautiful. After awhile, this game really had me thinking, wow, Kate’s right, he would be perfect for me. I thought back to all the times I was disappointed when I couldn’t see him, about how his face lit up every time he looked at me, and our discussions about how all we wanted was to find someone. I realized what I wanted was right in front of me this whole time. Now, my only problem was to find a way to tell him how I felt. All it took was my next Tabletopics card, “Describe your perfect boyfriend.” I hesitated with my answer, but finally said my definition of a perfect boyfriend would be: Tim Anstine. Tim couldn’t believe my answer, as he thought that I just liked him as a friend. It turns out that he always really liked me, but was always too nervous to do anything about it. In the three months that we have been dating, I have had the time of my life and look forward to all of the future adventures we’ll share together. I really can’t thank Nate and the creators of Tabletopics enough.

-Keri Slepecky, sophomore fashion design major