How Mom Met Dad…

Once upon a 7 and a half years ago, there was a little 16 year old girl that went on Crossword Camp.  There she saw one of the most handsomest men in the World!  Upon enquiry (discretely of course), she found out that his name was Seth Alfino and he was one of the most unattainable guys you could get.  Why you may wonder?  Well because it was told that before you could get to the handsome Seth, you would have to go through his Mother…  Besides which, he was part of the “cool crowd”, the crowd that this girl just wasn’t apart of.  However just before leaving the camp there was a shared smile between the two and it was all set in motion.  (Later we realised that we had actually danced together a couple of times during the barn dance, but neither of us remembered that until we saw it on tape).

My Favourite Pic... Weird I know

Although Seth would like to claim that my change to St James was only because of him, it would be a lie to say that St Timothy’s youth disappearing was not a factor (all be it small).  So I started going to St James in Grade 11.  I couldn’t keep my eyes off him.  What can I say, he is flipping hot!  I never in my wildest dreams thought that he even took notice of me, but that wasn’t going to stop me from trying (secretly somewhere deep down, I still remember thinking that I was going to marry this guy – whether that was just the typical over the top teen thing to do or whatever, it worked).  What is super duper strange, is that Mia (Seth’s oldest sister) taught me at St Timothy’s when I was like 10 or so, and I remember talking to her about whether she had a brother.  She said yes and I thought that I should meet him cos she is so pretty, so he should be pretty hot too.

One day (during church – naughty, naughty), I got an sms that said something super cheesy like “you’re looking hot tonight”.  It was from a number that I didn’t know and so my hopes started rising.  After flirting ridiculously all evening and having butterflies in my tummy the whole time, I thought I would put my mind at ease and ask one of my friends if it was Seth’s number.  When I called to asked her, she said “Why would he want to talk to you” but confirmed it was the right number.  I too thought it was too good to be true and tried to play it cool.  However my phone never left my sight for many weeks thereafter and we kept up the smsing.  We even progressed to phone calls made secretly from his Dad’s phone.  It was officially official on 21 September 2003.

On our first date we went out with Byron (mostly cos Seth didn’t have his license yet – I think he was on attempt 3 at this stage) to Cavendish to watch some movie or other.  We went to Look and Listen (cos that’s just what you did when you went to Cavs) and we stood under the bubbles that you could hear the music from the CD that you selected.  Seth then played Michael Buble  – The Way You Look Tonight.  My heart melted even more.

I can still remember meeting his parents…

**–**–** MOST EMBARRASSING MOMENT **–**–**

Yes, meeting Seth’s Mom was my most embarrassing moment of all time.  I am a very nervous person – deathly, nauseously,  teeth chatteringly nervous.  It was finally the day where I couldn’t avoid it anymore.  I was petrified.  So into the kitchen we go and Seth says to his Mom, “This is Cindy”.

Seth’s Mom – Hi Cindy, I’m Colleen.

Cindy – Hi Cindy…

Awkward silence, blushing profusely and feeling downright retarded, I just walked away, like an even bigger loser…

After that, I am glad to say that  it just got better and better – we said that we loved each other after like 4 weeks and we both knew we would get married shortly after that.  It was just a matter of waiting for school to be over and to finish some kind of studies to enable us to work.

Our first years together were spent going around in Myle’s car and then finally the Uno – after Seth passed his drivers on attempt number 5!  Wow did we celebrate!  Seth celebrated so much that he thought that he should “pimp his ride”.  The poor 1100 Uno got fake air vents on the bonnet (strategically coloured in with permanent marker to make them look real and an in off white colour to highlight the white of the car), a racing steering wheel (that eventually broke in his hand and ended up cutting him), a new gear nob (covered in carbon fibre stickers – to be replaced with a chrome one later), carbon fibre stickers placed oh so carefully over the lights to look like “bad boy” eyes (what can I even say about that), a NOS button (cleverly made but still a NOS button on an 1100).  He also added mags and changed the back to a flat back which, I will admit, looked pretty cool – pity that he forgot to move the light shining on the number plate down to where the actual number plate was now…   However the Pièce de résistance was the awesome “car theatre system”.  This was a magic touch to the car…  Seth purchased a 7 inch screen and skillfully installed it into the dashboard on runners, so that you could hide it when you parked the car.  This was linked up to A PLAYSTATION that was later upgraded to A HOME DVD PLAYER, that was placed on a wooden shelf under the dash on the passenger side…  Then one day the screen broke (shock, horror, disbelief)…  Seth got so mad that he ripped everything out, speakers, screen, dvd player…  All we were left with was a massive hole in the dash that suddenly became an air conditioning system that was always set to cold…

I remember staying up late with coffee or watching TV and Seth getting calls from his parents asking where he was.  One time stands out, we were working for Design For Living – from early morning till late and then he would still stay forever after that (surprisingly we didn’t get that sick of each other although some cracks did start to show).  One of the nights he was driving home on the M5 and you fell asleep, leaving the road and driving onto the embankment.  Praise the Lord that he missed any other cars, trees etc.  I’d like to say that we were more careful after that, but I don’t think we were.

One of my most favourite memories is of us spending the day at the holiday house that Seth’s extended family were staying at for the weekend.  We were offered so much food, chicken and chips, hotdogs, toasted sandwiches, sweets, biscuits, peanuts, etc, etc, etc.  We decided that we needed a walk down to the beach to exercise some of it off.  We were laughing about nonsense, making stupid jokes and being completely ourselves and silly.  We morantically wrote our names in stones on the beach – good fun times!!!

Other than that we spent so much time together, not going more than two days without seeing each other – some people may think that’s too much, but even now we can spend every waking moment together and love it.  These were good times.  I love you Seth!

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