Part one...The beginning.

"Is that Nola?" I asked, sitting down next to my mom. I always read over her shoulder as she 'talked' to her internet friends on Yahoo. She had met Nola on a parenting board called 'Raising Kids in a Rural Area'. I was about 13 years old.

Many years went by with them talking almost daily.

When I was 15 or so my mom would wake me every morning by yelling "Stephen says hi". I would hop out of bed and groggily sit in my spot as her 'parrot' as she referred to me, since I always sat reading over her shoulder. I would say ''tell him I said hi back''. That was the extent of it for a while. When his mom and my mom got tired of us telling them to "tell him this" and "tell her that", they made us get our own Yahoo accounts.

The first time I 'talked' to him, we talked about guns and library books. He suggested some westerns to me that he likes (which are still some of our favorites.) We didn't talk long, but I had fun. I didn't know any other homeschoolers, and didn't see my public school friends very often anymore.

After that we would usually talk for about an hour a day after our moms got off. Usually about guns, hunting, or other such things.

When I was 16 my grandparents took my brother Ben and I on a 3 month long trip to Alaska. The trip of a lifetime. It was amazing. I wrote Stephen a happy birthday letter and sent him an Alaskan keyring with is name on it that I got in Tok for his present.

When we were in Anchorage we got to meet another family that my mom had met on one of her parenting boards. They had a son about my age. He came to our camping park and hung out with Ben and I one afternoon.

Once we started getting close to being home, I was in a hurry. I knew from talking to my mom that Stephen and his family were going to be stopping to see them, as they came through on vacation. I was really excited to meet them. When we got home one of the first things I asked...after being gone for 3 months....was, "Has Stephen already been here?"
"Yes, they left yesterday", said Tommy. Man....so close.

Stephen and I went back to talking online, but now I was also talking to the guy from Alaska. Stephen often talked to his mom's friends daughter, as he would refer to his friend Kyla (Kayla). She would come and stay the summers with Stephen's family. He said she was like a sister to him, but I thought he 'liked' her. (She is one of my good friends now, by the way.)
So when the guy in Alaska asked if I wanted to be his 'girlfriend', I agreed. I thought I liked him. But looking back I liked what I WANTED him to be...Stephen. No really, I was always trying to change him. Make him more 'country'.
I tried to get Stephen and him to be friends online. They talked a few times, but never hit it off. Gerald was into cars, Stephen was into guns, and had never even drove a car, only pickups. I went a very long time without telling Stephen that Gerald was my boyfriend. I told myself over and over that I didn't like Stephen...besides, he probably had brown eyes, and I liked blue eyes.

To be continued........eventually!