Almost as soon as I got home for the summer of 2007, my sister started badgering me about meeting this guy Roger (her husband) worked with. “I don’t want a new boyfriend,” I’d say. “I don’t mean you have to go out, I just think you’d get along, you have a lot in common,” she’d say. Well, I wasn’t going to be set up on a blind date. She eventually stopped mentioning it.

One day around late May or early June, Jennifer and I went out together. You know, food, a movie, sister bonding time type stuff. Since we were in town, she wanted to stop by the newspaper to see Roger, since he was working at the time. I drove her over there and walked in the back entrance with her. She kissed Roger, and I stood back in all my I-just-came-home-from-NYU haughtiness, wearing my $19.95 sunglasses and Old Navy khaki capris.

“Oh, by the way, this is Josh!”

When Jennifer had mentioned Josh before, and how she thought he was my type, I had pictured some large muscular and/or fat man with a full beard and multiple tattoos on his biceps bared by his sleeveless top. Josh was so not that picture.

Before me was a scrawny boy of a man, about six feet tall with buzzed hair, slightly hunched over in an oversized t-shirt. He may have been cute, but I was too stunned by the fact that he was so opposite of what I expected to notice. He said Hi. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t even take off my sunglasses. I just gave him a stuck-up grimace of a smile, my arms folded and my butt tossed to the side.

Then we left.

I knew he wasn’t for me. And I figured I’d never see him again.

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