That was smooth

It was my first year in college and I was as equally nervous as I was excited. It was a fresh start and new way to reinvent myself from the person I was in high school. I didn't have many friends and I was heavily introverted. My parents were shocked when I told them that I would me majoring in Theatre. "So you'll be backstage helping with costumes?" they asked. "Well...no...I want to act." Mind you, I had never acted a day in my life because I was so shy. But it was somehow something that I was passionate about and decided to go for it. My first class was a theater and design class. We did the basic introduction of who we were and presented images that we liked. That class would be the beginning of many friendships...and a future relationship. But we'll get to that point soon.

I was partnered with a girl named Amanda "Mandy" for short, and we got to know each other and discovered that we shared a lot in common. I felt like I could be myself around her and we laughed about the silliest things. She soon became my best friend and we did everything together. We hung out in between classes, had Oovoo chats, and she introduced me to my favorite thing at the time: Tumblr. We would go to the computer lab and stay on Tumblr for hours reblogging funny memes.

One day she invited me to the mall. I had never gone shopping with anyone besides my family up until this point, and I was so anxious about it. Ok, well I don't really have to buy anything so maybe I'll just hang out and keep her company. We met up at the train station, and to my surprise she had brought someone else with her. Enter: Shane. A boy she had gone to high school with and also attended the same college as us but he was a Liberal Arts major. He was nice, handsome, and I found him hilarious. During the train ride to the mall, he made the corniest jokes but I couldn't help myself from laughing.

Ok, we have reached the grand moment of my story. Thank you for being patient with me to this point. We finally reached the mall and at the entrance there's a smoothie bar. There is always the typical worker that tries to hand out a free sample. He greeted us a with a simple song and the lyrics went "Smoothieeeee get your smoothe smoooothieeee." Very catchy, I know. I was so entertained by the song that I decided to accept the offer. As I gulped the smoothie, I had taken too much and my mouth was full. It was at this moment that I would soon make the most embarrassing moment of my life. Shane recited the song and I spit my smoothie out from laughter, and his entire face was covered in red liquid. I couldn't stop apologizing and I tried to wipe off as much as I could. He wouldn't talk to me and Mandy was trying her best to keep from laughing. I felt so stupid and wanted to run home, drop out of class, and never see them again.

We continued to walk through the mall. I followed behind Shane and Mandy, avoiding any eye contact with them. We stopped in front of Gamestop, and I was so excited by the new Wii U that had just been released. I was able to test it out while it was in beta a few months prior, so I was settled on purchasing it already. Shane looked at me with shock. "You play video games?" he asked. "Umm yea...casually...mostly rpgs and some shooters." We started talking about Legend of Zelda and Call of Duty. Pretty soon, we were all able to continue our mall adventures without it being awkward. I was actually having...fun...with friends.

Later that evening, I checked my Facebook notification and I had received a friend invite from Shane. I accepted and soon received the message "smoothieeee...hey :)" I was relieved to know that we were on good terms and that we could laugh about the smoothie incident. Over time, Shane and I became close friends and we started hanging out. The more we spent time together, the more attracted to him I became. But I wasn't sure if he felt the same way and I also didn't want to ruin our friendship. So I kept things casual.

After a year had gone by, I really couldn't keep my feelings to myself anymore. I told Mandy that I really liked Shane. She told me that I should follow my heart and go for it. So one day I asked Shane if he would like to hang out in the park. During our walk, I slowly confessed my feelings for him, and he laughed. I thought ok he doesn't feel the same way for me and I just made this really awkward. Later that evening, Shane messaged me saying that he wanted to go out for a "friend date" and see how things would go. I said sure, sounds good. We went to juice bar and we got...you guessed it...smoothies. Shane admitted that he liked me too but was afraid of making things awkward or affecting our friendship. We decided to give it a shot.

We dated for 4 years and there were some good and bad times. Mostly good times that I will never forget and have definitely impacted my life. We grew apart and decided to go our separate ways. I'm not sure if you were expecting a happy ending and were expecting us to end up married or anything. But no. We haven't spoken to each other in a year. I made the mistake of ordering packages to his house and had to text him to let him know that I would be arriving to get them. He was cool about and it simply texted "ok cool."

I wrote this story to reflect on how simple moments can lead to the most interesting times of our lives. Even the most embarrassing things have the hugest outcomes. And even though I am single now, the way I go about dating is totally different from how I approached it years ago in my college days. I'm still socially awkward but not as shy. I'm more upfront about my feelings head on and I no longer expect things to go a certain way. And most importantly, I've learned not to spit my drink on someone from a sudden burst of laughter.

Thank you for reading. You deserve a smoothie. Go grab one. ;)