How We Met

I'm late to the party, but I don't care.  I adore Grace's love story link-up and want to play, too.
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Paul doesn't like it when I tell people we met at Nerd Convention, but we did.  Here's how it went down.

My sophomore year of high school, I went to Model United Nations as a delegate representing Luxembourg.  My team's proposal didn't make it out of subcommittee, so the rest of the weekend was fully devoted to people-watching and general frivolity.  Paul was representing Poland and basically owned the General Assembly.  I developed a terrible crush.

The next year, I got smart and attended as a member of the Press Corps.  Press was all of the fun of getting to hang around the conference and talk to people, with none of the work of having to come up with a proposal ahead of time or the stress of having to present said proposal.  One of the GA sessions I sat in on featured a particularly stirring oration from Paul, and after the day wrapped up, I got one of the press guys from his high school to introduce me to him.  I stammered something to the effect of, "It's so nice to meet you; that was a really great speech."  His response was to grunt in my general direction and walk away.  I don't think Paul actually even remembers this event.  He claims he thought I was making fun of him.  Whatever.

There is one picture of us together that exists from this period,
but it has been lost to the mists of time.  This is the hotel where it all happened.

During my senior year, I returned to the Press Corps again, and was delighted to find that Paul was back as a college staff member.  When my editor suggested someone doing a profile on a college staffer--and specifically Paul, because he was pretty much a Youth in Government celebrity--I just about knocked people down to get the assignment.  Another girl ended up tagging along and co-writing with me, but she got in not one edgewise word during the interview.  We cornered Paul at the end of a hallway, where he'd been trying to get some work done.  He seemed annoyed that we were pestering him but answered our questions anyway.  At the end of the interview, which (to my great joy) ended up being way more conversational/flirty than I was expecting, I was racking my brain to figure out how to make sure he had to talk to me again.  Paul had published a guide to parliamentary procedure but didn't have any with him that weekend.  I bought one just so I could slip him my contact info all casual-like.

My plan worked (um, obviously).  He mailed me the book and included his email address.  We struck up a conversation via email and AIM (hey, it was 2003), and I started falling hard. 

Coming up in Part II: an awkward breakfast with Paul's dad, an awkward Sadie Hawkins dance, and a DTR on the steps of the State Capitol.