high school bet.

Mindy and I couldn’t have had a better time together in high school. We lived those four years full of wonder. We went on adventures that we called Tuesday Treasures, we cherished silly things like a branch from a boy’s front yard or a life size poster of Steven Curtis Chapman. We took road trips and sang all the way to the panhandle and ate ice cream for breakfast. We twirled and talked about the future, whole-heartedly believing it would live up to our crazy expectations. We talked about our dream guys and what it’d be like to fall in love. We both thought it’d happen to the other one first. So we decided to make a serious bet at age fifteen. We said whoever got engaged first would have to take the other one on a cruise. We signed this contract in pink gel pen. We included details about how awesome it’d be for the “loser” to be able to eat whatever she wanted since she wouldn’t have to worry about fitting in her wedding dress.

I won the bet. Mindy said yes to a strapping Air Force pilot named Dane, after falling in love just like we had hoped it would happen. When she told me, she thought I’d immediately say, “You owe me a cruise!” But thirteen years later, this had slipped my mind. I congratulated her and we started planning the details of her wedding. We laughed at the slim odds of us both being in Florida at the same time, since I just returned from NZ and she was in Asia, then NYC, then Kansas. We went to get a bottle of wine to celebrate. She said, “I’ll let you buy this, since I have to take you on a cruise.” My eyes got big. “Oh my gosh!!! I had totally forgotten! I WON!!!” I think I jumped up and down a little bit. Then I said, “Of course you don’t have to follow through with that bet. You have a wedding to pay for!”

She followed through and booked our tickets two days before we departed last Saturday. We THOROUGHLY enjoyed a five night cruise to Cozumel and Grand Cayman. We sat by the ideal group of people at table 356 who became friends. We twirled and we dreamed and we laughed. Thank you, Min.

I hope I lose our next bet, too.