Happy Halloween First Date

I may be a huge fuddy-dud, but I'm not a big fan of Halloween. It's not a big religious thing for me, the whole not liking it. I just don't like going around to people I don't know and asking for candy for my kids. I saw too many Halloween horror stories as a kid.

I do love letting my kids dress up, but we do that year-round. I do love going to visit neighbors we know. I do have some reasons to love Halloween.

1.The day after sends me into full blown holiday mode! This year, I am SOOOOOOOO ready for the holidays. I need them. I need to peace and joy that comes. I'm not going to stress out about it. I'm not going to insist on perfection. I'm going to love being with those I care about.

2. On halloween eight years ago, I found out the baby I was carrying was a girl...and what a beauty she has turned out to be!


3. And the one I am most thankful for is that 13 years today a fellow teacher asked me a "nervous question." Here's what happened...

I started teaching at Garland High School in August of 1995. There were 5 of us that started teach our first teaching jobs together: Casey (taught history), Tamara (taught French), Me (taught journalism), Ramona (taught German), Jill (taught English and IB).

We stayed pretty tight that first year. We would go to all of the football games together. We got matching sweatshirts and on the back of each shirt was a letter. When we stood together (in the right order) it spelled out O-W-L-S.


I think we were the "cool" teachers. We had a blast!

Below is us on a Halloween night game...14 years ago!! We each dressed up like a player from a GHS team.


We were all very different, but we had the common bond of making it through our first year of teaching together. As the second year began, Casey caught me in the hall one day and asked if we could talk. We were close, but I still found it odd. He came up to my room during our conference period (A2). His classroom was used by a "roaming" teacher during this period. Mine never was being the journalism room. He began to tell me about the girl he had been dating and that they had broken up during the summer. He was second guessing it. He'd broken up with her. He felt God had told him she was not the one for him. They had been discussing marriage, so she was pretty shocked. I remember telling him one day that marriage was hard when you were 100% sure. If he wasn't sure, he really shouldn't marry her!

Honestly, I had no designs on him at this point. He was a wild child, and I was pretty conservative, tame, boring...whatever you want to call it. He was NOT my type.

At any rate we started hanging out together, spending more time together, going to school events and talking. I remember on Wednesday night, October 30, confiding in a friend that I was getting myself in a difficult spot because I was developing feelings for him.

The next morning we were in my classroom grading when he said he had a "nervous question" to ask me. His exact words to me were "Have you ever thought about adding any validity to that article Kevin *** wrote?" Now, this may sound odd to you, but I knew exactly what he was asking. I merely said "yes". We were already planning to go to a football game together the next night. Now, it was a date.

So, the article thing. I had allowed a student to write a tv review for the student newspaper.
He wasn't on my staff, but hung out with a bunch of them. I said he could review "Sabrina the Teenage Witch". Remember that show? Well, on press night, I approved the page his article was on, put it in the box that would go to press and never looked at it again. I had COMPLETE confidence in my staff. Trusted them completely.

Did I mention that he was not on my staff?

A couple of days later as the paper is being distributed throughout the 5A highschool I worked in, one of my editors said, "Wow, Abbott! I can't believe you let him put this in here!" He had gone back and added a sentence to his article. Notice that first sentence!!

I was stunned! And mortified (again, we were not dating or even thinking about it at the time!)! And angry.

But now, it does make a great story doesn't it!

Maybe our attraction was obvious to everyone but us.

Whatever the case, I am so grateful that is all happened.

Grateful that he asked the nervous question.

Grateful that I said yes.

Grateful for the amazing way God has blessed us since.

You'll get the rest of the story over the next couple of months.