Groovy, Baby! (How I Met Your Father)

How I Met Your Father

My Dearest Daughter,

There are two versions to the story of How I Met Your Father.

The first is this:

We were introduced by a mutual friend!

The second is this:

We were introduced by a mutual friend…at Groovy’s.

Now, if you haven’t been to Groovy’s in OKC then I think it’s important that I paint you a picture.

Imagine your typical smoky bar.  You walk in and pay a cover that you quickly realize is too expensive once your eyes focus on the dance floor in the center of the room.  It’s marked off corral-style with wooden pickets and there is an actual disco ball hanging from the ceiling.  There is seating all the way around and a bar to the right that is about 5 people deep.  Your fellow patrons are: Frat Boys and men who wish they were still Frat Boys, a Bachelorette party, middle-aged single women on the prowl (some may refer to these ladies as “cougars”) and what I affectionately like to call “woo girls”.   You know the “woo girls”. They’re the girls who have a few too many glasses of chardonnay and then spend the rest of the evening yelling “wooooooooo!”

Are you with me here? This is not the scene of romance. Exactly zero rom-coms have this beginning. No little girl thinks, “And someday I’ll meet my husband at a bar.  Not just any bar – but a DISCO bar.”

That’s just not an inner dialogue that occurs.

I was living in Dallas when I met your father.  I had come home for a weekend to go to a family friends wedding and decided to go out on Friday night with one of my childhood best friends.  Not knowing the OKC night life at all I just left the location decisions up to her and went along for the ride.

Which is how I ended up at Groovy’s. Stone. Cold. Sober.

(Sweetheart, I’m not ever going to say that you need to have a drink to have fun, because that is not the truth.  But I AM going to say that if your evening is going to be spent at Groovy’s then a glass of wine may serve you well.)

We walked in and did a lap around the perimeter of the room and my friend introduced me to people as we walked around.  It seems that nearly everyone she went to college with had found their way into this odd little disco on this particular night.

And then – she introduced me to your father.  A few years after this introduction her toast at our rehearsal dinner would start with, “I didn’t mean to introduce Kelly and John…” so his being there and my being there was purely happenstance. Fate under the disco lights. She mentioned to your father that I had gone TCU.  He then made a joke about Texas private school girls and I’m not sure what I said in response because he was cute.  And he made me laugh.

And we danced. Under the magical light of the disco ball.  And honey, your father is a good dancer in the sense that he has no shame at all.  You should know that before your wedding someday.  Your first dance will likely involve his signature “roll the dice” move.  It’s exactly as cool as you can imagine.

And when we tired of dancing we sipped cheap beers and talked.  I don’t think we talked about anything of any great significance – I just remember how easy he was to talk to and how much he made me laugh.  And as the night was coming to an end, I realized that I didn’t want to stop talking to him.

It’s been 5 years since we met in a room with a disco ball and laser lights (did I forget to mention the laser lights?) and we haven’t stopped talking. Or laughing.

And if you catch us at a wedding – watch out. Because we haven’t stopped dancing, either.

how i met your father

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Kelly Guinn
Kelly is a working momma to her daughter, Genevieve (2014) and son, J.W. (2016). She’s an Edmond native, but left the state to get a degree in journalism from Texas Christian University (Go Frogs!) and work in Dallas for a few years. She moved back “home” to Oklahoma after meeting her husband and is now so thrilled to be raising her children right where she grew up! When she’s not working or playing with her kiddos, she’s making note of some of motherhood’s (mis)adventures and celebrating mediocrity on her blog –The OK Momma.

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