How I Re-Met Amy Marie Melquist

I met Amy Melquist in high school. We were both part of the IB program, so we had a number of classes with each other that first year of high school. However, I really didn't have an opportunity to interact with her until sophomore year gym class. There were only a few IB kids in the class, so naturally, we all sort of hung out. I remember she had just got back from Florida or something, and her legs were all burned and peely. Nice looking legs, though - I do remember that.

Our next real encounter came senior year, when we wound up taking IB art with each other. We both initially flocked to the back room to do our art, and we would have long conversations about various topics while she tried to throw pots and I worked on horrible paintings that I would later destroy. She was dating someone at the time, however, so our relationship never amounted to anything more than talking to one another on the phone here and there, and planning to skip school and get drunk together some day. We also discussed posing nude for a University of Minnesota art class.

I found her fairly attractive at the time. Though it was a period in my life where I was definitely not looking for a relationship, I looked around enough, and Amy Melquist was a hotty. Not only that, she was fun and interesting, and I always wanted to get to know her better. She was one of those people that you intend to get to know a little better, but never quite have the time required to do it. It was one of those relationships that if it was another time and another place, we might have fallen madly in love. The year passed quickly, and by the end of it, I was ready to sever my ties to high school completely and forever.

Ironically, as I embarked upon my first year of college, Amy Melquist was the first person that I bumped into from high school, and, give or take, the last (thankfully). We were both hanging out around Coffman Union between classes, and we had lunch together and walked around and talked about being in college. I even helped her initialize her University of Minnesota email account up in IT labs. I had hoped to bump into her again, but alas, I moved into the dormitory the next week, and I never saw or heard from here again.

Until six years later. I received a strange email that I didn't recognize. Accustomed to only receiving very dull and uniteresting email, I was surprised to get one from Amy Melquist. I answered her cryptically, still sort of awkward about opening up the lines of communication with a person from high school, a period of my life that I was really pleased that I had forgotten completely. But she was persistent, and didn't let me blow her off that easily. She might tell the story differently, but her persistence finally precipitated our first date.

We just hung out in my apartment one night. It was great. A flurry of conversation, a flurry of emotions, as I discovered that Amy Marie Melquist was not only as beautiful as I had remembered her, but she was also as cool as I remembered her. After our first evening together, we were inseperable, and we have been ever since. Melquist moved in after about three months of spending every single night in my apartment, and me spending the remaining nights in her room at her place. A little over a year after that, we embarked upon our first formal living arrangement together, and moved into a cozy little cottage on Como avenue.