chapter 2

September 2013

To go to the beginning of this story we must first go back to my first interaction with my beautiful wife, whose name is Anna Burg. God, I can still remember all the chatter of her arrival to school that fateful sophomore year of arguable the greatest roller coaster of my life. It was not every day we got a new person attending the school from another country, Anna was born in German and lived both German and England before moving to the US or that's what the more sensible rumors had put it. This almost captivated my school and for someone who at that point had no interest in the opposite sex at the time brushed it off until that first day of school September 1st. Now everyone gave Anna a warm welcome except the popular intelligent athletic girls in our school, because to them Anna was unasked for competition. Anna was a 5'10' goddess as I put it to a few friends who were absent. She played three sports, straight A's, and had a lean, toned, and tan figure that just seemed like she had to have been made by a Renaissance master since she was so perfect. Now back then I wasn't entirely like the massive extrovert entrepreneur I am now; to be honest I was a weak willed coward that wanted to make something of himself and the only class we had together build the very foundation of how I am now. Anna and I had the same engineering class 5th period every day.
Now for the rest of the school yes I was a weak willed coward, but in the engineering department I had a bit of a cult following after proving my prowess with creating machines, and rapid prototyping of designs; and Anna got a front row seat to me in my most natural environment. What happened next shocked me, she was my equal when it came to the engineering class. This shocked just about everyone was in our class and for those that would pay attention to what people thought was another rumor. This led to just before Christmas break our first true conversation. Anna was having issues, though she won't ever admit it, with getting her project to work and she came to me and asked in her district English German accent. "Matt could I have some help?"
My heart froze since I usually never interacted with her and out of the blue there she was behind me in all her beauty. And I said to her inquisitively "Ann could you get me your project and Diagram?" She was shocked I was willing to help since I was the only guy in the entire class, hell the entire school that really didn't interact with her. Now that was caused by my shyness, but she strolled across the room to retrieve all the things that I had requested and we went to work for the next 1/2 hour until we came up with a solution and fixed the project. It was nothing much but on the piece, that was required to make it work I couldn't resist to carve my initials into the piece.
Then she hugged me which surprised about everyone in the room, and I couldn't whip that boy scout grin on my face when her then boyfriend, or as every guy in that room would say was Sir Big Muscles Small Dickie the beloved jock Andrew Richard. From then on you could tell he knew his time with her would be up if he didn't do something, and yelled from the hallway "I'll be damned it must be the apocalypse!" Anna instantly released me and I went to interject "Andy come on man just move along it was nothing I just helped Ann with her project." Dickie retorted "Give me one reason why I shouldn't beat your face in." Well I just raised my arms and pointed at the tool rack, and all they guys that would follow me to hell and back and said, "Most of the school may pledge allegiance to you and your jock cronies, but in the engineering department this is my territory, and all these guys are my army so why don't you just go along to whatever class you are skipping and I personally promise this will never happen again."
That was the first time I stood up from myself and Anna stood there looking at me almost passionately as I told Dickie to take a walk. I turned back to Anna and proceeded said "You know you shouldn't have huge me all I did was put a little piece of plywood where it needed to be." Anna was shocked and picked up her project and when back to the other side of the room. From then on there was a slight bit of awkwardness in the classroom because of what I said, and how she reacted. It would be another two years before we would interact in such a way like in the workshop in the engineering department, but it was a step in the right direction, and boy could it not have come at the perfect time.