Weddingbee Blog

Part I
Part II 
Part III

This final part of our story could also be titled The Power of E-mail. Or better yet, the Power of Fate. Ah yes, I was not a big believer in fate myself, but readers, I hope to make believers out of you all.

Within that SAME week of my reading Mr. Petunia’s loaned book and seeing Nightmare Before Christmas AND trying desperately to devise a plot to get in touch with him - nay, DAYS, what oh what appeared in my work e-mail inbox but an e-mail from Mr. Petunia himself! The man had never ever written me before and remember, he had disappeared for months, almost a year even.

Of course, I still have the e-mail, and this is what he wrote:

“Hey stranger: Hope everything is going well. I just wanted to drop you a note and see if it would be possible for me to pick up that Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy book I had lent you. At least I think I lent it to you, it’s been awhile….who knows. I may not be able to pick it up this week or next, as I will be out of town on Friday. Anyhoo, I just wanted to see if I had lent it to you and if so, if there was a good time for me to snag it back from you. No rush, I just set myself on a mission of recovering lent books. I would just stop by and ask but I am working a ridiculous amount of hours these days. OH OH OH Did you see the preview for Goblet of Fire yet? Looks pretty damn good! Also, The Half-Blood prince is coming out soon (which I am sure you already know). I have decided to be an Uber-nerd and do the midnight B&N release thing for it. Alrighty, I am rambling, talk to you soon.”

Can you possibly imagine my delight?

I wrote back within seconds!

“You have no idea how I’ve been thinking about you…I’ve been thinking about your book and how I was going to get it back to you — I swear you read my mind. But I didn’t seem to run into you at Blockbuster anymore, and you forgot all about me! I thought I would e-mail your mom, because you’d given me her card, but felt kinda lame about it…I’m going out of town next week too, actually! I even got around to seeing the movie — oh, the “Sandy Claws” - I LOVED it! You walked out on me one day and never came back…”

Turns out Mr. Petunia ran the e-mail by one his girl friends to see how my e-mail had come across because he didn’t know how to “read” it, lol. I brought up Blockbuster because we’d run into each other there once. When Mr. Petunia wrote me back, he even said: “That’s funny that you mentioned Blockbuster; every time I go in there I give a quick look around to see if you’re there.” He also made sure to tell me “all my numbers are listed below, so if you ever get the craving to debate some Frost you can reach me.”

I jokingly scolded Mr. Petunia for having stopped coming to see me in my office, but he said he had “started to feel like a dork after hearing from the lady across the hall, ’she’s not in right now’. So I was trying to space it out….” and then he even offered to bring me something back from his overseas trip (even though he hadn’t seen me in forever — isn’t he sweet?).

We sent a few e-mails back and forth to each other that very same day. At first we very politely spoke about finding time to get together after our trips (to return the book). Then we debated how we could work our meeting each other in that same week before he left on Friday, then just called each other and said, “oh well, since we’re both going of out town soon, why don’t we just get together for coffee tonight,” which quickly turned into “well, neither one of us has had any dinner yet,” which just turned into our meeting at the Macaroni Grill for dinner that VERY same night we e-mailed each other and the rest, as they say, is history!

Things moved rather quickly for us from that day on, but I will save those details for another post!

Two years had passed between the time Mr. Petunia first sat in my class and our dinner “date.” He no longer had a girlfriend. I was no longer hung up on that crazy breakup I had suffered long ago. It was the right time for both of us, I suppose, but I wish I had picked up that book a lot sooner and seen that movie months earlier. I missed what was right in front of me for quite some time. When I think of this, it reminds me of a line from the song Bless the Broken Road: “I think about the years I spent just passing through/I’d like to have the time I lost and give it back to you.”

The two years did help me get over the teacher/student thing though, for the most part. Even so, once we were “together,” I made sure to speak to my associate dean about us as soon as possible, just to cover all my bases; he felt the situation was perfectly ethical, so any reservations I may have still felt (work-wise) were gone.

The “Hot for Teacher” jokes Mr. Petunia makes still turn me beet red sometimes though, I must admit, but he does love our story so, how can I deny him telling it and with such enthusiasm? After all, he’ll always be my #1 A+ favorite student!