It all started when I was 20. I am now 48, so brace yourself this is a long one. I will not do it all in one post.

I was in college. My life was pretty decent. I paid for my entire tuition on my own with the help of grants, scholarships, loans and working 4 jobs simultaneously. I was finally on my own from a small town in Ohio to what felt like the big city, even though it really wasn't all that huge.

My first roommates were both black. I only mention this because of my small town upbringing. You see I only knew one black man and one gay man ... and it was the same guy. For the record, I only new two Asian people and they were twins. Let's not forget one Jew ... yep, that's all I knew. The rest were white and mostly Italian Americans. To say that I was sheltered and very unaware of the world is a gross understatement.

My biggest fear of starting college was that I would flunk out. I wasn't a particularly bad student but I knew some subjects weren't my favorites and I had it in my head that it would be infinitely more difficult taking classes at a college level. The good news is I was pretty darn good at college, especially after a boyfriend told me I was smart. This was something I had never heard before but I have an open mind and he was a chemistry major so if he said it, it must be true, or at least that's how I thought about it.

Fast forward through two boyfriends to the third boyfriend. His name was Chris. He was not my physical type but there was something about him and oh my, was he talented. As I got to know him, he was funny and smart too. He got all A's and at that time, that was all the criteria I needed to know he was in fact, smart. He was a musician and a singer. He sounded and even looked like Billy Joel. He could make his voice sound like Billy or Elton and even Bozz Skaggs or Billy Vera. We connected through music. I had been a voice major so running into him at the Conservatory was apparently how he first saw me. I never noticed him but he made sure I did later. So after dumping our current significant others (although how significant could they have been), we were together. Inseparable is more like it. We laughed, loved immediately, fought and sang together. We were engaged just six months after our first encounter which by the way, was while I was working and he was on a date but that's another story.

We planned a wedding that would happen right after I graduated from college, just four years later and many majors later. Our itinerary included living together for about a year prior to our wedding date. His Mother was not thrilled about that so she suggested we move it up a year. That would mean we would marry after he graduated and one year before I did. My gut reaction was that if I married early, I would not finish and after all, why was I working so hard to prove my new found smartness but to finish college????! His Mom said there was no reason I couldn't just finish school as a married woman.

I have to say that although I didn't go to college for an MRS degree, it wasn't off my mind. I was preoccupied with marriage. You see, I wanted kids so much, I cannot even express how much but I will try. Let's put it this way, when I was little I had a bunch of baby dolls and then as I grew to only 11, I began babysitting and when I was 13, my first nephew was born and he was the absolute love of my life. I adored him so much. I would let my sister sleep in and feed him every morning even at the young age of 13. I was very close with him and it only made me want babies more. I LOVE babies and to this day, if they were like goldfish and had tiny life spans I would have a hundred. It's not so much I wanna see them floating on top of the water but the idea is that there would never be too many. I am the baby whisperer. Soooo, back to the MRS degree, maybe it was more on my plate than I am letting on. I wanted that as much as I wanted my independence and a degree.

Bottom line, I was married at 20. I had two majors. They were Speech Communications/Theatre and Political Science with a Theatre Minor. My ideas for a career included being an attorney or a newscaster. I loved acting and of course adored singing but I wanted to be more practical. Well, after I got married I was deciding which of the two directions to head and did some research. I quickly found out the divorce rates for attorneys AND broadcasters were really high. How did I find this out? I read about it somewhere or someone said it or who knows, I just wasn't going to take that risk. I was left wondering what I would do for a living. I said to Chris that I couldn't do any of those jobs due to the divorce rate so maybe we should start a family. His response was this, "Let's try for 6 months and if we don't get pregnant within that time we can consider it a sign and wait.". I agreed wholeheartedly. We got work on it right away. Is that the nicest way of saying we had  ton of sex you have ever heard? Well, perhaps needless to say, one month later we were one month pregnant. Waiting was no longer an option.