He Jump Started My Heart...
by Michele Klecker, River Falls, Wisconsin

I had seen Pat around my apartment building, but in the five years we lived there, we hadn’t said more than hello to one another. Pat also attends my church, and I would see him at evening mass, sometimes at an early morning service. Spirituality is very important to me, and for Pat to have the same faith as I did, was, and continues to be, a bonus. I asked my next door neighbor if she knew anything about him, and she said, “Nothing except that he plays his music really loud.” (And he still does.) Then I asked my apartment manager if she knew if he was single or not, and she said that he was. That was all the invitation I needed to attempt to “jump start” a relationship with him.

My car didn’t start one morning (really, it didn’t) and he was the only one home to help. I decided to let the little vixen inside of me out to play, so I knocked on his door and asked, with a smile on my face, “Will you jump start me?”

Paying Pat was not an option.  He insisted that was what neighbors do for each other, so I offered to bake him a pan of brownies. I gave him the brownies on a plate he had to return, with a note that read:

I am much better at my conversational skills than I am at my baking skills. How about a beer sometime?

“Yes, I would love a beer sometime,” he said to me, as he was jump starting my car for a second time. (Really, it didn’t start again!) Of all the great luck.

The second time I said to him, “I baked you brownies the last time how about a cheesecake?”

“Cheesecake, I could do,” he said.

I baked him a cheesecake the second time; again, I had it in a pan he had to return, with another note that read

Roses Are Red Violets Are Blue, How About Some Beer, Brats And Brownies For Two?
“Yes “ was the answer to that.

Our first date was May 29, 2004 on my birthday.

He said “I love you,” on December 12, 2004, and we are now planning our wedding.

© Copyright 2007  Grab Your Tiger: How 110 Women Made the first Move to Capture the Men of Their Dreams by Kathy Schwadel