our little love story: when we first met

I love Ben and I love remembering and retelling "Our Little Love Story" over and over again...

I was working at the Gap during college and had already been working there for over a year before Ben came along. Ben was a new hire and I remember walking towards the middle of the store to go and meet him. My first thought was "This guy is HOT!!!" and I proceeded to introduce myself.

"Hi, I'm Ruby."

He then introduced himself and we shook hands. Mind you, I was 19 years old and he did seem a bit older to me, so then I asked him, "How old are you?"

He said, "26."

I said, "Dude, you are so old you could be my grandpa!" and I walked away back towards the cash registers. Okay, he couldn't really be my grandpa, but to a 19 year old, 26 was ancient.

Maybe I said something funny like that out of sheer nervousness because really, he was super hot! I tended to say funny things around cute guys because they just made me nervous, but I can tell you it hasn't happened since. Everyone has paled in comparison to Ben. Guys I thought were once cute, suddenly weren't. After that day, my life has never been quite the same...

I had been living and working in the Washington DC area (Northern VA) and got laid off Summer 2001. I figured it was the perfect time to move to Southern CA where I had always envisioned living, so I did (thanks to my cousins Lupita, Alex, Gabriel, and Rafael who let me crash and invade their house!).

I couldn't find employment in what I had been doing (advertising), so in desperate need to have at least some income, I started looking everywhere, and I mean everywhere. After a few odd jobs, and being turned away from every fast food outlet imaginable, the Gap hired me (thankfully I had worked part-time at Banana Republic for a number of years prior).

Within the first few days of working at the Gap, this cute, young, and sassy girl bounces over to the section of the store where I was and introduces herself. She follows this immediately up with a question about my age. Kinda odd, but she was young.

I guess she thought I was old, so she said something like, "you're old enough to be my grandpa!" What?!! And then this little whipper-snapper bounced away in the same fashion she approached me with her cute little self.

As cute as she was, and as nice as that derrière was, it wasn't "love at first sight" for two main reasons: 1) I had just gotten out of a relationship and that was the last, last, last thing on my mind, and 2) She was only 19!.

But she was very cute, and that derrière was very nice...