December 19, 1976, I met Mark Searle on a blind date. We went to a dinner dance with Bob and
Brenda Bingham-Tracy . Mark came
to the door to get me and he didn't look the way I would have imagined. I didn't visualize myself dating
someone of Mark's size and especially his fashion sense!!!! He talked to my mom while I finished
getting dressed. He told her about
his cat Tuffy eating the bulbs on the Christmas tree. I wore a yellow dress with a high collar and a cameo pin on
the neckline. It was the same
dress I wore to the prom but my mom and I shortened it. About two months ago, Mark was having a
graft done on a heel ulcer on his foot.
He was afraid. I was
holding his hand during the procedure and I said "hey Mark, try to think
of something else, like what was I wearing the first time you met
me." He was wincing in pain
and fear, but became quiet for a few minutes. And then he said "it was a yellow dress with a jewelry
pin, and you looked beautiful."
The doctor said "WOW! how long ago was this?" And Mark said
"it was in 1976, December and I will never forget that." ... The doctor, who was very young said "i have no idea
what my wife wore the first time I met her, so I hope nobody ever asks me that
question." ... Mark Searle,
I love that you never forgot anything... especially me!
Back to the first date in 1976. Mark walks me out to the car and
Bob and Brenda
Bingham-Tracy were in the front seat. Now remember, this is a blind
date and I have never seen or heard of Mark before this day. Mark and I are in
the back seat. We make small talk. I ask Brenda if she picked up the tickets to
the dance at school (it was prepay only) and she said something like "I
thought you said you got the tickets yourself." Well, I didn't. I remember
we were told specifically there would be no ticket sales at the door. So, I
frantically discussed this scenario with everyone in the car on the way to the
dance. I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to do with this guy I was with
if Bob and Brenda got to go to the dance and I was stuck with this guy alone
that I didn't know. We get into the restaurant and a couple of girls from
school are sitting at a table collecting tickets. I walked up and blurted out
this entire scenario about how I thought my friend got the tickets but there
was a miscommunication and she didn't get the tickets and would they possibly
have mercy on me and my date and let us in the door. As they were discussing
this possibility, the man that was "my date" that evening, pulls two
tickets out of his jacket pocket and bursts out laughing. I guess Bob, Brenda
and Mark Searle
were all in on this joke and it was at that moment that I decided I wasn't ever
going to go out with him again. :-)
The first date: The sequel: After I sufficiently embarrassed
myself enough standing in line and fretting over tickets that we didn't have,
but actually Mark had in his possession all along, we proceeded to find a
table. I remember thinking that Mark wasn't really all that funny even though
he kept chucking over his little prank. We were served dinner and everyone got
the same thing. Steak and potatoes and vegetable. Mark starts poking his fork
at the steak and tells me that he isn't into eating animals that are still
alive and somehow makes my meal seem quite unappetizing too. (I ate it anyway.
I lived in a house with 9 people and steak wasn't something we ate, ever!!). So
he says he doesn't dance. Brenda and Bob were dancing and Mark and I just sat
there. It was weird and I was still upset over the ticket thing. Anyway, after
the dinner "dance," Brenda and I had plans to spend the night at her
house. The guys walked us to the door and Brenda's mom meets us there to see
how our evening was. We all stood in the doorway and laughed and talked and
then Mark does it... he says IN FRONT OF EVERYONE... "I had a wonderful
time tonight and I would like to take you out again next weekend."
AUGH!!!! Now how am I going to get out of this?? So I said ... yes... but I
didn't want to!! He made plans to take me out the following Friday...
The second date; He told me we were
going to dinner and a movie. I
can't remember what I wore but I know I dressed casual because we were just
going to the movies. Mark came
down the street in his own vehicle this time (the first date was in Bob's car). That day he drove a black Dodge
Challenger. When he turned the
corner onto my parent's street, you could hear him coming. The music was blasting so loud that we
could hear him 100 yards away. He
pulled up and got out of the car with a cowboy hat and still wearing the
jewelry around his neck. He had
jeans and a tshirt of some sort.
He walked with his feet turned out like a duck. (He told me he had a football injury to
a tendon and when it healed, it forced his feet to turn out...so that made it
less weird I guess). The car
leaked gasoline so bad that while it sat there in the driveway there was a
puddle under the car. When I
got in his car, I was unimpressed to see the entire dashboard covered with a
black and red shag carpet. He
proudly told me that he did that himself!
Really?? No kidding!! Then he showed me how the glove
compartment was just a tiny seam in the carpet and it was completely
disguised. He was quite proud of
that fact. He played music really
loud in the car all the way to the Pizza Hut which is where we went for
dinner. And then played more music
on the way to the movies to see Clint Eastwood in The Enforcer. It wasn't exactly "chick
flick" material, but the movie was actually quite intriguing and the pizza
was good. I thought he was
odd. He kept trying to put his arm
around me during the movie but I leaned quite far in the opposite direction and
tried to give him the clue that this wasn't really working out. (He was oblivious). When he walked me to the door after our
2nd date, I had practiced in my head how I was going to let him down easy. He said "next weekend is my
birthday. Would you like to go out
with me to celebrate it?"
..... YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME... I thought. So I said "sure, that sounds
nice." ... will the
third date be the charm??
January 5, 1977 – Mark picked me up in his noisy, shaggy, leaky
vehicle and we went out to dinner.
I dressed up and so did he.
He wore another leisure suit (who knew someone would buy more than one
of those things). He somehow
thought that opening the button of his shirt past his chest was attractive and
he had the Justin Beiber hairstyle, only there weren’t a lot of girls swooning
over that, for sure. We went to a
restaurant called “The Vineyard” and it was the first time I had ever been to
an “all you can eat buffet.”
Remember, I was raised in a family with 9 people and one pound of pasta
fed all of us with just a meatball and a small salad. This place was massive. I still, to this day, wonder if Mark noticed my mouth gaping
open during the entire meal. We
visited and we chatted and he laughed a lot. I was starting to notice that the guy spent a lot of time
laughing. He listened while I
talked randomly about my plant that I named Gregory and my family. I talked. He listened. I
talked some more. He listened some
more. So after dinner, it was
freezing cold in his car because it had something wrong with the heater
(nothing wrong with the radio), but the heater was broken! He had a blanket in the car that he
handed me and we drove around his section of town. We drove by where he lived and where he went to high
school. He pulled into a dead end
street and there was a circle at the end of it that he stopped the car and put
it in park. I thought “Oh
Fabulous, I’m gonna need to use karate.”
(which I had no idea how to use, by the way.) He looked over at me and said “when I met you that first
night, I couldn’t believe that someone like me would be able to date someone
like you. I told my friends that I
expected a “3” or a “4” and I got a “10.”
I love spending time with you and I would love it if you would wear my
class ring.”
I wish I could describe my thought process at this moment. I was thinking something like “this
can’t be happening; how can I tell him no way; and awww this is kinda sweet”
all at the same time. I reached
out and placed it in the palm of my hand.
It WAS the palm of my hand; it was huge!! My ring size was a 5 and his was an 11 or something like
that. I looked at him and said “I
can’t take this ring, I don’t even know your last name.”
Well, if any of you have ever seen the video of Mark laughing,
that was what he did. He threw his
head back in the car and started laughing from his toes all the way up to the
top of his head. He laughed and
laughed and laughed and laughed. I
had no idea what was so funny because I was serious. When he stopped laughing he said “this is why I love you
already, because you are so funny.”
Then he said “it’s Searle S.E.A.R.L.E, Searle” all while he was still
chuckling. So I took the
ring, because I didn’t know what else to do and put it on my finger. He said “thank you so much, you have no
idea how happy I am.” I thought,
“you have no idea how confused I am.”
And he drove me home. Who
knew that the ring on my finger was going to connect us for the next 36 years…
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