PART DOS

Okay folks, part two—are you ready? But first, you can now see how the Beatles wrote a song about me and Brett:

Well she was just seventeen
You know what I mean
And the way she looked
Was way beyond compare
So how could I dance with another,
Oh, when I saw her standing there

Well she looked at me
and I, I could see
That before too long
I'd fall in love with her
She wouldn't dance with another
Oh, when I saw her standing there

Well my heart went boom
When I crossed that room
And I held her hand in mine

Oh we danced through the night
And we held each other tight
And before too long
I fell in love with her
Now I'll never dance with another
Oh, when I saw her standing there

All right, so actually, before my dad called that night, there was a First Presidency Christmas Devotional. My roommate Jennae, Kami, and I all walked together. Kami’s roommates drove. We sat near the front, and Kami’s roommates and Brett and Drew, sat near the back. For some strange reason, my head kept turning during the devotional so that I could catch glimpses of Brett.

After the devotional was over, Kami and Jennae and I were making our way to the doors and caught up with Kami’s roommates. They invited Kami for a ride home, but I convinced Kami to walk home. And somehow, Brett walked home with us—I didn’t ask him to or imply that he was invited or anything. But, he started walking beside me, and said, “So, have you thought any more about our discussion?” Which I thought was pretty weird, and confusing, so I said, “Yeah,” and he said, “And what did you think?” and like I said, I was pretty stumped as to what he was trying to accomplish by this interview, so I said, “Nothing productive,” ran up to Kami a few steps ahead, and hit her and yelled, “Tag!” and started running away. We ran the rest of the way home. Now, I was a complete idiot for not asking Brett what HE thought about our “discussion.” Oh well, it was too late when I thought of it. (p.s. At my bridal shower my sister set up the game where she asks Brett questions about me beforehand, and then asks me the same questions to see if our answers match, and one of the questions was “What would Kayli do if she was trying to avoid something?” and he answered, ‘Run!!!’ –and I totally got it. As an aside, another question was “Describe something Kayli does out of the ordinary.” And he said, “since when does a Rasmussen do something ordinary.” Ha haa—good one. Another question was (yes, I’m reading the paper right now), “What type of animal would Kayli be?” and he said, “Black panther” which I totally impressed everyone by getting right—but it was easy cause I had just gone to the zoo on a field trip for a class and had told him. And another good one, “What’s Kayli’s favorite place to be kissed?” (such a risqué question Kam!) and he said, “That’s for me to know and you to wonder about.” hee hee. )

Anyway. Kami asked Jennae and I to come over after we changed out of our church clothes (okay, really I’m sure we just came over at my insistence…but I’m TRYING to not look so desperate). We were hanging out in the lobby and before too long…you guessed it, Brett and Drew showed up. Brett ended up showing me some of his mission pictures (we’re pathetic at breaking up, obviously) and we talked for a while. Then I went home and cried myself to sleep. Not really, but I really did have a hard time sleeping with all my thoughts going around and around. The next day I was quite distracted and not feeling completely normal, and exhibiting all other symptoms of love-sickness. Jennae came home from classes and said, “Guess who I saw on the bus?” and I said, “Brett!” and I had this weird lurch in my stomach that she got to see him and not me. It’s true, I remember feeling grrrr. Then she told me to come to FHE with her but I didn’t want to, so I stayed home, or rather, went over to Kami’s house and read a Louis L’amour in her lobby (okay, now I’m really showing just how pathetic I was).

So of COURSE, Drew and Brett came in from their FHE and Brett started talking to me a bit, while Drew went to help Marshelle do the dishes. So Brett asked me if I wanted to see the progress he’d made on his turn signal and I said yes, because that’s what you do when you want to be with someone even if you have not the slightest interest in a car part whatsoever. Anyway, so then we talked for longer, and all the while I was feeling sadder and sadder because I liked him more and more.

I can’t really tell you why I liked him so much, partly because I think I can’t make the distinction between what appealed to me then versus what I love about him now, and also because I think it’s always hard for anyone to explain why you like someone. You just do. You just feel right together. But for one thing, I always enjoyed being with him for just being with him, not like it was just fun to feel witty if I said something funny, or because I’d feel cool that I’d gotten asked out, just because it was really good to be together. And because I felt a lot of admiration for him, and I could tell that he was smart and determined and a super-hard worker. Okay, also because he was (and is) very good-looking, good-smelling, and very very fun.

The next day we didn’t really see each other, but I checked my e-mail and saw a message from Brett. I assure you that I maybe have never been so excited in my life…for he had looked up my e-mail address and written to me. It said,

“Sorry things got uncomfortable between us. You seemed a bit down last night, I hope that you feel better today.

In all my years of inexperience and unwise decisions I’ve learned that life is difficult and throws us some unexpected stuff sometimes. The truth is, I don’t know what to think about us. Well I’m pretty much at a loss of words, I feel like Jo-Jo the monkey-boy who has never seen the light of day before and is finally allowed to go outside. He has been waiting for this day his whole life, living on the descriptions of the beautiful world fed to him by George the Human Cannonball. He enters the out of doors only to find that the light is too harsh and bright for him to withstand so he runs back to his little cubicle.

Oh hud I just realized that I am not even sure I’ve got the correct address. I have to go to class as well.
Bye Brett”

Okay, any guy who ever dares say that women are hard to understand…just read that! But I THINK I got the general drift of how he felt.

Then there was a second e-mail that said, “P.S. All Chevy Novas are unibody.” I laughed my head off for so long, remembering all the time we spent driving around Salt Lake trying to find a Nova that was not a unibody. It was really great timing for me to have something to make me laugh, because directly after reading that, I went to a piano “final” type thingee, and did really REALLY bad. But I didn’t even care. I kept thinking of his p.s. and grinning like a goon. And all the people in the room who wrote criticisms on their reviews of my performance probably wondered why I was so happy with my poor job. (And that was the last time I ever took piano or music anything in college, Ginger. Sheesh!)

I e-mailed Brett back and decided to disclose my honest feelings, which were that I was actually feeling a little bad and sorry that we had ended our relationship (I hate using that word, but that’s what it was).

The following day, I got another e-mail from Brett, but this one was a more normal-type letter. It didn’t really say anything definitive, but it was nice. That night, Jennae and I went over to Kami’s house to have scriptures and prayers with them. This wasn’t uncommon, even though I didn’t really like Kami’s roommates much and they made everyone give a group hug after prayers (??!) which I adamantly refused to participate in. Drew was sortof dating one of these girls, which was an uncommon lapse in his judgement but we’ll excuse him, so he was often over for scriptures and prayers too. Which meant Brett was as well. So that night they had gone to the temple, and come home just in time for scriptures and prayers, and then Jennae and I started squirting everyone with water guns that we had smuggled in, which Kami’s roommates did not appreciate nor find the fun in, but Brett joined in the exploits.

Before I went home to my apartment that night, Brett said, “We need to talk.” Duh duh duh. So we said we’d talk at noon tomorrow, so I went home and didn’t sleep the whole night. And after I did finally fall asleep, I woke up before 7:00 –on my own—which you realize, is HIGHLY incredible.

So, when I got home from my math class (I’m sure I really soaked up everything that day!), I went over to Brett’s house, and he offered me some lunch, which I declined, and then he said, “We might as well get to the point,” (that is so Brett), and he said that he thought it was a mistake not to date just because of my age, and that he felt like he shouldn’t let the opportunity for something good to pass (I later learned that he had gained much of this attitude from talking with Drew’s older sister Heidi. Praise Heidi!).

So we hugged and that was it. The end. All right, all right, so then we went for a ride in the Opel—the first time I’d ridden in it—through the canyon. I think we went all the way to Beaver Mountain before turning around. Brett did a few doughnuts in the snow in a random parking lot (also very Brett), and we talked a lot. And I was sooooooo happy. I was just happy happy happy happy happy happy.

The next part is a little bit more fuzzy, because I stopped writing in my journal, but I’ll tell you what I remember although it won’t be exactly in order.

We were together pretty much ALL the time every day after that (excluding classes is all) until Christmas break roughly two weeks later.

Some of the things we did were helping Andrea move from her little rental house to an apartment (I remember this because Brett borrowed Drew’s truck and was helping us haul all her stuff, and I had this weird feeling, because this was not really like just going on a date—it was something you would do if you were 'together.' I don’t know how to explain it. Anyway.)

We played racquetball at the HPER. Okay, okay, I’ll tell about the very unfortunate event that occurred. You see, Brett was an expert racquetball player, but I had never really played, so to make up for my lack of skill, I just hit the ball really, really, hard. Yeah, so, after one such hit, the ball came whizzing off the wall and hit Brett really hard. In a place that was pretty much the worst place one could choose for a ball to hit. Yeah. It was bad. I was lucky that Brett continued to see me after that. Oh, the humiliation.

We went hiking. This was also somewhat embarrassing only because Brett, having very recently got back from his two years in Switzerland wherein he went hiking up the Alps every P-Day, practically skipped up the mountainside, while I started panting and gasping after a while. In my defense, it was in the snow in heavy snow boots, which didn’t make it easy. (After we got engaged we went hiking one time with Drew and his date, and Brett really wanted to get to the top of the mountain, so when I was so tired he tied a long sleeved shirt to his belt and I held on and he pulled me up with him. :) )

One night we were sitting around in my apartment with Kami, Andrea, and Jennae and I can’t remember just how it started but we dared Kami to eat a raw egg and she DID! So then we started doing dares for everyone, and Brett was all eager for a dare, thinking it would be something like eating a raw egg, but then we told him he had to go to Charlie’s Icecream place and order icecream in an operatic song which was a w e s o m e. But I’m thinking I’ve already shared that story?

We went to a Bar J Wrangler show. I'm pretty sure this picture is from that night. It is the only picture I have of us before we got engaged. Brett is wearing the camel shirt I mentioned before. Aww, he's so cute!

One time Brett and I and some other people tried rolling a huge snowball in front of the door to one of the dorms, but some RA came and chased us off—after all our hard work! Okay, Brett’s hard work. Then we threw a lot of snow at each other, ran down the road, splashing through every puddle, to the elementary school’s playground. My feet were seriously frozen, but it was muy muy fun. (Okay, I am now wondering if this didn’t happen after we were engaged….I just can’t remember. Sorry.)

So, somewhere in here we started saying ‘I love you’ to each other, and as unbelievable as it sounds, I honestly can’t remember the first time, or who told who first. WHAT?! I know. I REALLY wish I had that invention that the kid makes in “Meet the Robinsons” where you can rewind and view a time in your life that you can’t remember. Arrrgh. Anyway, we started saying it before we even kissed, which I realize is not the norm. I do remember one time though, I started wondering if I had been a little hasty in saying I love you, so that night when Brett dropped me off at work (I didn’t have a car), he said, “I love you,” and I said, “…Bye.” Oh, the omission was GLARINGLY noticeable. I’m sure Brett was wondering what in the heck had happened. But nothing really came of it, because I just repented of my ways and started telling him that I loved him again.

Oh, and we did kiss and it was fun, but I won’t go into the particulars. ;)

And now, because Brett is saying I have to turn off the computer and come to bed now, that is the end of part two.