The Beginning of "I Love You…"

“We don’t know the moment when love begins,
But we always know the moment when love ends.”
-Harris Telamacher
(L.A. Story)

If you haven’t seen the movie, do yourself a favor and see it. That’s it. That’s my plug for the film “L.A. Story.” I won’t say anymore about the movie. I would like to address this quote, as it is one of many that this movie offers for those who listen while watching movies.

Since I first heard Steve Martin’s voiceover lay down these words, I thought that they contained infinite truth and abundant wisdom. That was before I fell in love with Jen. Now I know that with some love, one can mark the beginning, and hopefully never the end.

I had seen her, watched her talking with friends, and I couldn’t help but notice how she looked in her pink jumper. What can I say but that I had a bad case of the smitten kitten? But that was not love. Smite, even deep smite of the heart, does not equal love. Only love is love…accept no substitutes.

I remember the time and place when the smittenness of my heart morphed into love. It was across a Subway counter in Littleton, Colorado. Jen worked there, and I had a part time job hanging out and watching Jen work. Now before you call me a filthy stalker, let me just say that we were dating, and I had to spend as much time with her as I could because I had plans to leave the country for a few years. So it’s cool…simmer down…she was ok with it.

Like I said, she was working and I was watching her work. In a lull, a brief moment, we leaned across the counter to sneak a little kiss. It was a peck on the lips, nothing more, but it unlocked a new world. Everything changed, and I realized it at that moment. As we parted, I wanted to tell her that I loved her. I mean I really loved her and I knew it.

Before I could even draw breath to give power to those words, she said it first. I was relegated to an “I love you, too.”

It felt lamely given, but held no less truth than the phrase “I love you” without the “too” attached to it. That was it. That was the beginning of the “I love you…more” war. Though my “more” came out strangely sounding like “too”, it was true.

“We don’t know the moment when love begins,
But I do know, Jen, that I love you more.”
-Bob Justus
(Just now…this blog)

Who is the Top?

I'm not quite sure what it means to be "the top." I don't know if it is a height thing, or if it has something to do with spinning...or what. I just don't know. I can say that there are a few things that I do know about the top...but most of those things I learned from the Cole Porter song. If he thinks he was pathetic when he waxed those words poetic...yet he thought it best to get them off of his chest. I am not just parading by my own serenading in a pretty little ditty thus expressed:

Jen's the Top! She's the Coliseum.
Jen's the Top! She's the Louvre Museum
(pronounced LOOVE by the way.)
Jen is the melody from a symphony by Strauss.
She's a bendel bonnet,
a Shakespeare sonnet,
(I won't say that she's Mickey Mouse...though it does rhyme with Strauss.)

So I can't say enought about my wife. I know that it's not our anniversary, or some special day that I should remember (at least I "think" that I know these things...) I just had an enormous outpouring of emotion for her, and I had to say:

Jen's the Nile! She's the Tow'r of Pisa.
She's the smile on the Mona Lisa.
I know that I'm a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop!
But if I'm the bottom, Jen's the top!

Jen's the Top! She's Mahatma Gandhi
(just with better cuisine tactics.)
Jen's the Top! She's Napoleon Brandy
(non-alcoholic...'cause we're Mormon.)
Jen's the purple light of a summer night in Spain.
She's the National Gallery; she's Oprah's salary,
She's the Spaceship 1 plane
(I had to update these lines because the original's have been "topped" so to speak...)

Ok...that's enough of that. The song goes on and on, and frankly is outdated by quite a bit the further on that it goes. I am sure that some of the comparisons are still timeless; but who knows anything about the Whitney Stable or the moon over Mae West's shoulder anymore?

So, with the graphic that I included you can plainly see that I am the speck hiding behind the smallest blade of grass at the bottom...and there, above even the guy dropping the cat off of the top of the known universe, is Jen. Click on it if you need to make it bigger. I got it off of this great site called xkcd.com....it's great and you may want to check it out for yourself.

She is the top.