WDR

WDR is the name of the poem I found tucked away in a box of treasures that I was sorting through the other day. I have no idea when I wrote it, my guess is that it was for our first anniversary or something. You'll need a little background information before the poem will make any sense.

Blaine and I started dating when we were 16. Our sophomore year of highschool (before we were 16) we hung around in the same group of friends. I really wanted to break in to the inner circle of boys within our group, and so I kind of invited myself to play hockey with them in the afternoons and on Saturdays. It was the most fun thing ever! Hockey is a blast.

I am sure it probably bothered them that a girl came out to play, but I really tried hard, even breaking my hand in an effort to impress my friends. Well actually, I broke my rollerblades in an effort to impress my friends, the breaking of my hand was a really embarrassing result of breaking the blades.

So we played hockey our sophomore year and the following summer, we got lagoon season passes. A girl will do funny things when she is in love with the two boys she goes to lagoon with every day. Like the time I strapped myself between them and got hoisted up a ten thousand foot tower, where one of them pressed a button and sent us plunging towards the earth and our imminent death. Any of you who know me at all, know that I must have really been in love with Blaine to do that. Like....for real.

When I was 16 I started working at Winder Dairy. I worked in the "Country Store". A little store that served lunch and sold milk and other dairy products. I also had a night job there answering the voicemails that had come in throughout the evening and changing customers orders accordingly.

Blaine's uncle was a pretty high up manager at the dairy, and Blaine's family lived across a field from the office. So Blaine got the opportunity to do some pretty classy odd jobs. He got to get all the milk that had gone sour and dump it out (which explains why Blaine doesn't like milk!), he worked in the icebox pulling orders, he stapled advertisements to bills (which had to be done late at night and I sat in an office off of the room where he and his cousins would staple the ads on), and most importantly - he got to bag compost.

That's right! Behind the Country Store where I worked there was a heaping pile o' compost. And Blaine's job was to take that heaping pile o' compost and stuff it - with his bare hands - into bags and seal the bags, stack them on pallets and get them ready to sell.

It was a glamourous job.

You may not know this about Blaine, but he is extremely motivated by money. He is a hard worker and always has been. So while my crush for Blaine intensified through playing hockey and going to lagoon, etc. If I wanted to spend time with him, I usually had to go out after work and sit on a heap of cow manure and talk to him while he worked.

Yeah.

That's love.

Flinging yourself off of a giant tower, sitting on heaps of compost, etc.

And now, my poem.

When I Fell in Love or WDR (Winder Dairy Romance)

When people talk of love and various romance

they always mention moonlight and a special sort of glance

they all claim they fell in love with just a look or two

funny, cuz that's not the way it was with me and you.

When I knew I loved you it was no starry night

we were hot and tired, playing hockey in daylight

And if there was a special glance, there was no candle glow

it was likely one of fright, Scott's hockey stick in throw

Though now I see your features with the tenderness of silk

when I fell in love with you, you smelt of sour milk

You'd always wear that old sweatshirt, it looked better than a tux

and ever doing all you could to earn a couple bucks

I dare not think of where we'd be without the aid of Bill*

or conversations in the compost with many bags to fill

Many folk would cringe to think of shoveling cow manure

but my best memories were made while smelling like a sewer

Though the contents of this poem seem silly or untrue

it was under these conditions that I fell in love with you

It did not happen all at once, there were no trumpents sounding

but through the years my best friend started making my heart pounding

Winder Dairy is renown for milk that is quite awesome

I'll remember it, however, as where our love began to blossom

I think I have a career ahead of me in poetry, no?

*Bill was a funny older guy who worked at the dairy late at night and would talk to Blaine and I individually, and much like we were in junior high school would relay messages (without our express permission), and it was kind of through him that we both figured out that the other was interested in us. As a side note, Bill looks 100% EXACTLY like Mr. Noodle from Elmo's World. I am not thoroughly convinced that Bill is not moonlighting from his Dairy job as Mr. Noodle.