Erin

By Christmas Time, Dena and I had been fully dating again and getting back into the same bad habits. she was being anti social, and I was missing out on fun things to cater to her every whim.

  Due to a shortage of money, Dena and I agreed to celebrate out Christmas on Jan. 25th. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but by New Year’s Eve, I realized it was not.

  Jay was having a New Year’s Eve party at his house and we were all having a great time. But with a half hour to go before Midnight, Dena wanted to go home. I was so annoyed. She insisted, so I did. I raced her home and got back in time for the ball to drop. I would have been in a terrible mood, but Denver had invited a friend who’s family were family friends from church. She had long dark hair and kind of hippy-ish. She looks like Alanis Morresette, but we did not know of her at this time. Anyway, she didn’t really know many people at the party, but she was smiling and having a good time as she danced some happy hippy jig around the dining room table by herself. Then and there, it hit me in a second, that Dena was not the girl for me and never would be.

  I believe this was one of the rare parties in which Paul drank at. He passed out asleep in the living room. He would do the same thing later on at one of his own parties and I remember his dad looking down at him while holding a beer jokingly wondering if Paul really was his son.

   After agreeing to postpone our Christmas, to break up with her before the new date would seem pretty callous. Then it was so close to Valentine’s Day. On Valentine’s Day Weekend, I volunteered to work at a florist for a friend. I spent hours stripping thorns from long stem roses. It was good money and when I had all that money in my hand I thought to myself, I don’t want to spend any of it on Dena. The day after Valentine’s Day I sat Dena down and broke up with her.

   I may very well have decided to pursue Erin at this point, but Sean had developed a huge crush on her and while nothing was set in stone, he called ‘dibs’ in the months while I was wallowing in the swamp called "Dating Dena." In the end, it worked out because, Erin and I are great friends and were even each others ‘backups if neither of us were married by a certain age.