Our First Date

The doorbell rang, and the kids raced each other to see who could pull it open first. Moe was standing on the front step, grinning from ear to ear. He hadn't been able to come for Family Night on Monday, but here he was on Tuesday evening, the day before Stephen's eighth birthday.

“Moe, Moe, Moe!” Stephen chanted, while Alyssa hopped up and down and Russell smiled off to one side. Linnea and Holly were too cool to join in the fray, but they were standing in the door to the kitchen, watching.

“I brought you guys something,” Moe began, laughing as he tried to extricate himself from Stephen's hug, “Come out to the truck and help me get it.”

We all trooped out front with Moe. Reaching into the bed of his truck, Moe flipped a tarp over, exposing a saw-horse cow!

“What do you think?” Moe asked as he lifted his creation out of the truck. “Won't this be easier to rope than Jeffrey?”

Stephen shouted in excitement. Russell circled the saw-horse carefully, examining every inch of it, and Alyssa ran back into the house to grab the rope Moe had left for them to play with two days earlier.

Moe laughed when she ran back out with it. “Hold on, partner,” he suggested. “Why don't we take this cow into the back yard and set him up so you can really get to roping him?”

Stephen and Russell helped him carry their new pet into the backyard, then Moe helped the boys re-do the lasso at the end of the rope. It had come undone as they used the rope tying each other up over the past two days.

“Thank you,” I told him once the kids were busy trying to rope the saw-horse. “That was really nice of you.”

“No problem,” Moe grinned again. “Every little boy needs a cow if he's going to learn how to use a lasso.”

We laughed and visited on the back porch while the kids played. Moe stayed for dinner and we had a nice evening, although the kids monopolized his attention. In fact, that's what happened most of the time. Moe came over more and more, and we all enjoyed him, but I kind of wished for a chance to be with him by myself.

“One of these days,” I told Moe the following Friday night as we visited while he ate his dinner in the Temple cafeteria, “it would be fun if we could go out on a date all by ourselves.”

He laughed, but I guess he thought about it, because the next Friday night while we visited he said,

“We haven't had a chance to go on a real date,what with Stephen's birthday and his baptism and everything, but would you like to go out with just me tomorrow night?”

Of course I wanted to, but I was a little concerned about leaving the kids alone. Linnea and Holly were way to old to need a babysitter, but they had other plans for Saturday night. Russell was 12, but he wasn't the most reliable babysitter.

“Don't worry,” Moe assured me. “We'll stay close.”

The doorbell rang right at 7:00 the following night. “I'll get it,” I told Stephen as he ran around me, trying to beat Alyssa to the front door. There stood Moe, grinning like always, holding a bouquet of flowers and plastic grocery bag.

“Thank you,” I exclaimed in surprise. I hadn't dreamed that Moe would bring me flowers!

“You're welcome,” he told me. “Since this is our first official date, it seemed like a good idea. And these,” he said holding up the grocery sack, “are for the kids.”

He opened the bag and pulled out a handful of candy bars, making the kids squeal with delight.

Our date turned out to be quite simple. We just went for a long walk around the neighborhood, walking slowly, enjoying the cooler evening air; but it gave us a chance to be alone and talk quietly.

The following day I invited Moe to dinner. We always ate Sunday dinner with Sharon and Colton and their little boy, Jeffrey, since they lived in my parent's side of our double house while mom and dad were on their mission. I also invited my sister, Linda, to bring her kids and eat with us. Linda and Sharon and Colton had a great time joking around with Moe, mostly trying to guess what his real name was. I'd asked him months ago if Moe was his real name, and he'd explained that it was only a nick-name his parents had given him, but he wouldn't tell me his given name.

We tried to figure out what it possibly could be, I mean, what could Moe be short for? Moses? Moroni? We just couldn't figure it out, and Moe didn't offer any suggestions. I finally got him to admit that his name really didn't have anything to do with his nick-name. In fact, he couldn't even remember why his parents had begun to call him Moe, so we stopped trying to find a connection and just began guessing names. None of them were even close.

Eventually Linda got on the phone and called her friend from Moe's ward. “Do you have a ward list handy,” she asked her, and can you look up Moe's name in it?” Moe blushed scarlet when he heard Linda, but he didn't stop her. Finally her friend came back on the phone and told her what she'd found. Linda told us, and we were all pretty amazed. Moe's given name sure didn't have anything to do with his nick-name, and we finally began to understand why he didn't us it all the time.

“I'm actually a junior,” he told us. “I'm named after my dad, but he hated it too. When he was a kid he'd beat anyone up who used his full name.”

We laughed over the fact that his dad would pass on a name that he didn't like, but most of all I admired the way Moe accepted our teasing, joking right back with us. He really was a neat guy, and I was having a ball getting to know him better and better.