My Date With Thomas Webb

If every girl in the graduating class at Kalamazoo Christian High School kept a blog, many of them could have written a post with the same title as this one. My brother-in-law Tom has been dating around for a while...actually dating an entire clique of girls in his class, so he decided it was time to finally "settle down" and tie himself down to one single girl. WHOA! Big news. It was a good move to save himself a lot of drama. So he officially started dating this new "Jenna" person yesterday.

OBVIOUSLY, since I have no brothers and have adopted Rex's as fully mine, I had to go check this girl out. I mean, not just any girl is worthy of a Webb brother. This is how I ended up on my "date" with Tom. He wanted someone to go with him to watch Jenna's choir concert. No one in his family was jumping at the chance, so I said I would go.

We had fun talking on the way there, and we had the BRILLIANT idea of buying Jenna flowers to give to her after the concert. HUGE brownie points. Then we forgot by the time we got to the auditorium. Um...oops. We snuck in the back entrance just in time to see the band packing up and the choir getting ready to go on. PERFECT TIMING. So the choir (about 3-4 rows in front of us) got up and started walking up front. Jenna noticed Tom and waved enthusiastically, but then I saw her face get a little confused. All of a sudden it hit me - her boyfriend arrived at her concert with another girl!! Ha ha she had no idea that I am his sister-in-law! No wonder she was confused. I should have put my arm around him or something to make it even more awkward.

The choir concert got off to a scary start. They sang some Zimbabwe song that included a lot of stomping and clapping and scary yell-y music. I told Tom that I was probably going to have nightmares about it. He agreed. We decided that if the rest of the songs were going to be that weird, we would just leave, go buy the flowers we had discussed, and make it back in time for the ending.

Luckily, the concert went upwards from its scary beginning. They had a lot of good music, and they had a barbershop/beautyshop sing-off between the boys and the girls. They even sang some Glee - it was good stuff. When the concert was over, Tom and I stood up to go. He said, "Do you want to stick around for a second or do you want to head out?" STUPID QUESTION, TOM!! I OBVIOUSLY NEED TO MEET THIS GIRL. I told him that we really had no choice but to stay, seeing as he had to explain why he brought a GIRL with him to the concert. He said she probably wouldn't care. I replied that he'd obviously never had a girlfriend before.

So Tom has tied himself down to one girl, but we could not get through the lobby without flocks of gooey-eyed females tittering, "Hi Tom!" "Hey Tom!" "Thanks for coming, Tom!" When did he become such a playa playa? I have no clue. I mean, he's cool, I love him like my brother, but it's like he has drugged all girls to love him or something. It's borderline creepy.

While we were waiting for Jenna, we found her parents. Tom started nervously making small talk with them (after all, he's been dating their daughter for what - 24 hours? Awkward!). They kept throwing curious glances in my direction until I finally kicked Tom and hissed "You have to introduce me!!" He turned around and said, "Oh yeah, this is my sister-in-law Christine." They were visibly relieved that Tom was not already cheating on their daughter.

Finally we found Jenna, and she walked up with one of her best friends Julia. Now, Julia and I have a bit of history because her sister Charissa was my room mate in college, and both Julia and I were in Charissa's wedding last year. We get along great. So I did that stupid girly squeal/hug thing that girls do when they haven't seen each other in a long time. I mean, I hate it, but it's in our genes or something. Girls always do it. So I squeal-hugged Julia, saying, "Oh my goodness it's so good to see you!! You did so great tonight," etc. etc. Then I turned to Jenna, and because I'm sooooo classy, I just said, "Oh hi. You must be Jenna. Sorry, I hugged Julia because we're sort of best friends from a while back. But I just met you like...right now. So I think a handshake will have to do." Luckily she was okay with that.

I talked to Jenna for a little while after that, and she seems really cool. It may seem a bit premature to bestow girlfriend approval, but so far so good. I told Tom that I like her.

On the way home Tom and I had SO much fun discussing their relationship (which, let me remind you, is one day old). I would discuss the contents of that conversation, but I can't because both of his brothers, his sister, (and possibly his mom?) read this blog. TOM WHY DON'T YOU READ MY BLOG?! I EVEN WROTE A POST ABOUT YOU!! I should spill his secrets just because he doesn't choose to follow up on my virtual musings...but I suppose that is vindictive and cruel. Suffice it to say that it was a lot of fun, and I'm really glad I got roped into going to that concert.

Next project: arranging a quadruple date with all four Webb siblings and their significant others. It will be EPIC!