DAVID SWANN / DSWANN@STARBULLETIN.COM
Heather Reed and Jordan Stallard trace the beginnings of their love to her fascination with his lens-less, taped-up glasses.
That magic
momentLove is ...
A geeky pair of glasses ...
A guy you can't stop talking about ...
A play date that ends with triple-scoop sundaes ...
OK, everybody sing along with Jay and the Americans, and if you can't sing, hum, and if you can't hum, just try to grasp our meaning here:
This magic momentTruth is, love doesn't often reveal itself in a first kiss or a first glance or any of those old bon mots. Let's just say love is inexplicable.
So different and so new
Was like any other
Until I kissed you
How else could our Valentine contest winner, Heather Reed, have been attracted to Jordan Stallard, who sounded 100 percent geeky to even the most romantically inclined of our judges?
Whole Lotta Love
Join us as we celebrate Valentine's week:Monday: Singles count on friends, not valentines.
Tuesday:Pick a gift for your beloved.
Yesterday: Five foods that say "I love you."
Tomorrow: Turn your home into a love nest.
It was a normal day at work on that fateful day in 1999 when she saw him walk in "with a 'Star Wars' metal lunch box.
"I thought he was perfect, but the other girls thought he was goofy so I didn't pursue him."
They didn't cross paths until a year later, and he was still goofy: "I spotted him again wearing sunglass frames with tape around the middle and no lenses. This time I decided to ask him out. The only problem was that he didn't know who I was."
He made the introduction a little easier when, a few days later, he took the tape off the glasses.
The enterprising Reed then "got a pretty piece of stationery and wrote, 'What happened to the tape around the glasses?'
"I walked over to his desk and gave it to him, then left as fast as I could. The next day, I avoided his side of the office all morning until one of my co-workers came running over and yelled, 'THE TAPE IS BACK ON THE GLASSES!'"
And then it happened"Jordan and I went on our first date on Jan. 17, 1999, and have been together ever since!"
It took me by surprise
I knew that you felt it too
By the look in your eyes
He proposed last month and she said yes, although they have yet to set a date.
To this day, Reed, a marketing coordinator for T-Mobile, said: "I can't explain it. It's just something that jumped out at me. It was just a personality quirk that was unique and intriguing.
"It was just to be different, just to be Jordan; he put the tape back on and asked, 'Is this better?' and it opened up room for conversation."
Since then Reed, who claims her past boyfriends were "normal," discovered more quirks in her beau, now a loan officer. "He has so many of them. I love most of them. It keeps life exciting, keeps me laughing."
There's really just one thing that bugs her, and that's his playing the didgeridoo, the wind instrument of the Australian aborigines.
"Being Jordan, he can't just play guitar or drums, so he plays the didgeridoo, and people say you love it or hate it. I hate it," Reed said.
Well, nobody's perfect.
Reed and Stallard win a romantic weekend stay at the Outrigger Waikiki, a dozen roses from Watanabe Floral and free passes to see the Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore romantic comedy "Fifty First Dates."
Our second-place winner is Toni Davis, for whom mother proved right and in seven words sparked an epiphany.
Toni had been dating George for six months when he had her so frustrated that she retreated to her family on the mainland to chill out for two weeks.
Davis wrote: "At the end of the two weeks, my mother said to me, 'Go back to Hawaii and marry George!' I looked at her with a puzzled look. She said to me, 'You've talked about him nonstop for two weeks now, so you must be in love!'
"I hadn't realized I had been doing that. So it sunk in that she was right."
But it wasn't smooth sailing. Toni returned to Hawaii and dropped into their favorite haunt, where George promptly gave her the cold shoulder out of self-defense, knowing how mad she had been when she left.
What's more, he asked a blonde to dance. Toni said: "He knew what he was doing. He was trying to make me angry, push me over the edge. Once I saw that blonde, that was it. I called him the next day, and we've been together ever since." She adds, "He's been suffering for it since."
The couple married three months later, and now make their home in Kaneohe. They celebrated their 25th anniversary last August.
Meanwhile, Leslie Allen knew the guy she started talking to while they were both running up Tantalus, Milton Ebesu, was special, and his thoughtfulness was made even more clear when he asked her kids, then in intermediate school and high school, for a date.
After much thought to determine if he was a man she could entrust her kids to, and a family powwow, they agreed to a trip to the Bowfin, the Arizona Memorial and the Waikiki Aquarium, followed by triple-scoop sundaes at Baskin-Robbins. "They didn't make it easy on him," Allen said, though all the while, he was capturing their hearts.
In the meantime, Allen relished her free afternoon, writing, "I knew from that moment that Milton was a keeper." They married in 1995.
This magic momentBoth couples win matching his-and-hers T-shirts, disposable cameras, mini photo albums to capture more romantic memories and passes to see "Fifty First Dates."
While your lips are close to mine
Will last forever
Forever till the end of time
Thanks to all who wrote in to share their own stories of love found in times of sickness, and crises, or who found meaning in flowers, shoe laces, pizza with anchovies, and sardines with onions. Ah, love; ain't it strange.
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