#10: Chapter 3: "I Know...Right?"

In the past 2 blogs I have told you about the statement that has affected my daily life for over 15 years, and I told you about the person that was most crucial to my growing up. So where did the affects of said statement and the loss of said person take me? Well for that, we need to discuss VIP #2.

I had been working at Blockbuster for about a year. When I started we had a store manager that everyone just loved and respected. However he had finally reached a point where driving way out of his way to reach a store that was extremely stressful to run finally got to him, so he asked to be transferred. They then brought in a new store manager that was younger then everyone that was working there and really shook things up. By the way, when I say the store was stressful, I mean well over 2000 rentals and returns every weekend day. If I'm not mistaken we would make at least $10,000 every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

This is the actual Blockbuster we worked at. It's amazing what you can find online.

One of the things that the new manager did was put me on the day shift. This sucked a little because all my friends worked nights. It was shortly after this that we hired 2 new girls that were seniors in high school. One of them was going to the high school that I went to (I was a senior when she was a freshman) and the other was the sister of a guy I had been in band with. She went to a different high school though. The ironic thing about them was that they were born on the same day, one in California, the other in Colorado. However that being said, they really couldn't have been much different. The girl from California that I essentially went to school with was named Denise Robb. I never really worked with her much because she worked nights. We would do inventories together and occasionally work together on the weekends, but I really didn't get to know her to well. One of the major times we worked together was on New Years Eve 2000/2001. Little did we know what that year was going to hold for us. Well, the end of it anyway.

In August of that year I went into work and she told me that we had to hang out outside of work. I having had no life (wait, having had no life like things are different now?) was fine with that. So we made plans and on August 15th 2001, we had a lunch date. We went to a hot dog restaurant she really liked called Chicago Mike's. We then went to the Denver Aquarium (Which has Tigers for some reason). Then we went bowling. I learned something that day. I had been working with the most fun girl I have ever known in life, and I was completely oblivious to it. It wasn't until later that I found out what the reasoning behind her saying we had to hang out was. Apparently, she would complain a lot at night about the fact that I was a horrible assistant manager. She actually rather despised me. Chris (my best friend, remember, from chapter 1) told her that she should get to know me as I wasn't as bad as she thought.

This is one of the tigers at the Aquarium. No they don't make them swim all the time.

Well she ended up learning that, and we ended up hanging out a lot after that. We really liked each other and I would dare say we ended up borderline dating (although we tend to debate about this to this day). We classified it as an Amish relationship at the time though. Everything was going quite well until about October. Her mother got laid off from her job, and not being able to find a new one in Colorado, had no choice but to move back to California. Denise had no choice but to go with her. I was devistated. For the first time in my life I had met a girl that I really liked, and who liked me back, and now she was leaving. In December of 2001 she moved back to California, and I had lost her. It was the hardest thing I'd ever gone through in my life.

Two months later the universe showed me what true devastation really was (that's Chapter 4, which will be written tomorrow). For the next year, I just kind of went away into an emotional haze. At some point I ended up going to California with my family, and I hung out with Denise for the day. She was dating a guy I really knew nothing about at the time. That ended up being a really bad relationship in the end. She came back to Colorado once to go to a friends graduation and we hung out. We'd talk online every now and then, but we weren't really as close as before anymore because we'd drifted apart.

Then in 2004, she invited me and Chris to go to Vegas for her 21st birthday. She was single at this time and I was finally back on the planet from my haze. I had it in my mind that we were going to pick up where we left off. Of course, that wasn't the case. She was a different person at this point. Still the most fun girl I've ever know in life, but things were just different. We did however end up seeing each other more after this though. She came to visit and stayed at my house in January 2005, (which was hard to explain to a grandmother with Alzheimer's) and I went and visited her in the summer of that year.

Chris, Denise, and I in Vegas. She's drinking out of a skull.

She had recently started dating a new guy when I went out there. While I was visiting I caused a few problems because he was a little jealous of me. I always find that hard to understand because if there was ever going to be anything between us, he wouldn't have existed in her life. But I digress. The two of us went to Disneyland and had a blasty blast. It was on the way home from that trip that I decided I couldn't keep saying goodbye to her. I knew I had to figure out some way to see her more often.

We got dressed up and went to Hollywood to see Dane Cook on Jimmy Kimmel Live. We didn't get in and ended up going to hooters and Ripley's instead.

It was then in December that my grandmother passed away. Two months later Denise came out to visit. On February 24th, 2006 our bond pretty much became cemented with each other. The two of us and Chris were going to go to an adult convention that was in town just for a few laughs. However when she woke up that morning, her stomach wasn't feeling to well. We went to a med center that her insurance was associated with, but they were getting ready to close so they gave us the run around and wouldn't see her. She was so upset about it that she just wanted to go back home. I called my mom and she convinced me to take her to the emergency room. We went to the hospital I was born at. An hour or so later I was on the phone with her mom telling her that her daughter needed to have her appendix removed.

Denise is an only child, and the most important thing in the world to her mother. She was flipping out and telling me to go tell them she needed to get on a plane and get home before any surgery was done. I did my best to calm her down, then went back in and stood by Denise's side. That's where I stayed until she went into surgery, and as soon as she got out, I resumed my post. Her family is forever greatfull for that, and her mom will always love me for it. For me the thought of leaving was never an option. Who would do that? Her mom ended up getting to my house about an hour after we returned from the hospital, and the next day they flew back to California.

Now we've reached the point where I needed to find a way to move as I had decided to do. Well if you remember I said my aunt bout me out of the portion of the house I had "owned". It was with this money that I made the move. So in July of 2006. I packed up my car, and with Chris's help, drove to California, with a stop over in Vegas.

Chris took this picture as we were driving to California. It's the reflection of my car in the hubcap of an 18 wheeler.

I ended up living with her and her mom for my first year and a half here. I will admit that I had the hope that things could go back to the way they were in 2001, but that just wasn't possible. Especially once August of 2006 rolled around.

This is one of the first pictures taken after I moved to California.

It was in this month that she went on a blind double date her friend had set up. It was on this date that she met Justin Hewitt. They got along quite well. In fact they started dating. I, being a bit more immature and delusional at the time, had a problem with this. We ended up having what I think is the only fight we've ever had because I was being a bad friend and not being supportive. Once I started to get to know Justin though, I really had no choice. I don't think I've met a nicer more caring person. After getting to know him is when I finally realized that there is no way a relationship could have ever worked between me and Denise. I'm nowhere near the man he is, and she deserves no one other then him.

When I moved out of their house, I actually ended up living with Justin in two different places over the course of two years. They are now engaged and will be getting married in October. I'm going to the bachelorette party...Jealous?

So, wait, what? Oh right. You see, once again if that whole Chapter 1 thing hadn't happened, I never would have worked at Blockbuster, never would have met Denise, and never would have been sitting here right now in an apartment in Long Beach. And if my Grandmother hadn't passed away when she did, I wouldn't have had the money to move here and bare witness to what is easily one of the greatest relationships I've ever seen in my life, and I wouldn't have been able to hang out with my bestest friend ever in life for the past four and a half years. Her, her mom, and Justin aren't just friends anymore, they're my California family.

This picture was taken just a few months ago outside the Irvine Improv. I just noticed I'm always on the left and she's always on the right.

P.S. Oh, yeah. So she is the first person I ever heard say "I know...Right?" Just one day her and her friend started saying it at work and I ended up adopting it as a result. It was after that that I started hearing it everywhere! That's not the first time I've hear her say something then a few months later it's everywhere. Coincidence? Well, yeah. That'd just be weird if it wasn't.