Reader Entry: How I met Him

Sent by Isioma Chukwuani:

Hey guys!!! This is so much fun! To begin, let me find a picture for visualization purposes.

This is Rob (I was gonna just say R, but with my igbo accent it sounded quite razz).

So, how I met him... It was the beginning of summer about 2 years ago. I had just started this internship at a psychology research lab working with depression in children. I thought depressed/ suicidal children were fascinating, so when I got accepted into this lab, I had no intention to make any friends, I just wanted to do some research and write articles. Plus, being the only black person always makes me feel awkward, so I wasn't planning on talking to any of my fellow research assistants. As time went by, many days in the lab got very boring, and since I didn't talk to anyone, I decided to draw so that I didn't end up falling asleep. Rob always sat in the prefect position, the sun rays from the window always hit his facial features beautifully, so I would always sketch his face on my notepad. I didn't think I liked him at this point, his face was just perfect to me, so I would draw it. Anyway, one afternoon I was driving home from the lab, rap music playing loud as hell, dancing at the red light, I thought I was alone on the road. I glance to my left, and there he was...waving trying to get my attention/laughing at me. *awkward moment* . I felt so...black! Haha. This red light was so long, so we kept locking eyes with each other, and then shyly looking away. During the rest of my drive back home, I kept thinking of him..'why did he keep looking at me?'...'and his smile, why is it so beautiful?'. The summer eventually came to an end, and we never said a word to each other. By the time the fall semester started, I had completely forgotten about him.

Forgotten about him, until I walked into one of my classes, and there he was! Sitting in the front of the lecture hall, playing with his hair. I didn't know what to do. I text my best friend immediately "Rob is in my class", she was confused. I waited until class was over, and then I purposely bumped into him on my out. "Oh! Isioma, we have class together? Do you want to sit next to me next class? I'll save a seat for you".....My heart melted. So each class, I sat next to him.

{I realize that a "How I Met Him" series should only talk about one romantic encounter, but you see, my life can never be that simple.}

For weeks, I sat next to this boy in class, and everyone, including our professor thought we were a couple. My professor felt joy seeing a biracial couple together, and was never secretive about sending us awkward smiles and winks during class. To Rob and I, this was comedy...in fact, to us a lot was comedy. We had the best conversations about art, music, and movies together. We would send each other texts of quoted lines from 'The Killers', 'The XX', 'The Temper Trap', and even 'Elvis Prestly'. I knew he was my type, he was an artsy kid who painted and rode his bike everywhere, but I didn't want to make the first move. Meanwhile, we were still volunteering in the depression lab, but with different class schedules, we never saw each other except for when we had class together. Until this perfect day. I went into the lab because I had to meet with one of the families and assess them, I thought I was going to be alone, then I opened the door and see Rob, sitting there. He looked so good, I didn't know what to do with myself. I had never seen him dressed up before! But there he was, with his laid back/casual artsy boy appeal dressed up with a tie and all. "Hey Isioma, I came in to help you out, because there are actually going to be two families today, there was an error in the schedule"...I was so excited! We were going to spend about 6 hours together...all alone in this lab, it was a perfect Saturday in my opinion. So we went outside to wait for the families to arrive, and it started raining. Before I could react, he grabbed my hand, and we ran hand in hand to this tree that was close by. We stood close together underneath this tree laughing at ourselves. Then he goes, "Isioma, you look really good today"...my heart stopped, I blushed, I looked into his eyes, and I said "Yea Rob, you look really good too".

*THE END*
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Isioma Chukwuani
Rutgers University