WEDDING

​His Story

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The story of me meeting Sarah started a week before I knew she existed. I was in Katherine, NT for work and on the drive home, noticed I had an itchy leg. I put it down to a mosquito bite and didn't think any more of it. As the week progressed, my leg got worse but I figured it was just an ingrown hair or similar. By the Friday, I was in significant pain. I had to spend the majority of the day sitting down at a conference and that evening, sitting down at a ceremony in Parliament House where I had to present an award. By day's end, I couldn't stand the thought of getting a lift home (and having to put more pressure on my painful leg) so decided to walk the distance of Mitchell Street and stop in at every pub along the way (to self-medicate the pain of course!). 

 

For those that know my Darwin existence well, I am a loyal creature of habit. Any suggestion that I spend any time at a venue other than my beloved Lost Arc would be met with a scowl. On this night though, it was the exception and for a good reason. At one of these pubs I ventured to (Six Tanks) I was standing out the front and randomly bumped into an old friend. We were talking, and eventually, I felt as though we were being drowned out by the cackling ladies behind me. I started to eavesdrop and, admittedly, the nature of their conversation was not one I particularly agreed with. I turned around to check out who these conspiring witches were to notice the beautiful Sarah; firstly from her spunky nature but secondly from the fact that she wasn't contributing to the conversation being had about females taking over the world and becoming overlords to masses of useless men :o) 

 

After eavesdropping a little more, I interjected into the conversation and got shutdown by Sarah's friends. I wasn't going to give up easily and decided to change tact. Eventually I got the courage up to spark a conversation with Sarah which eventually led to me arguing that I knew all there was to know about marketing the NT and that no campaign could ever beat the Daryl Somer's “You’ll never never know, if you never never go”…. It was shortly after my protests that Sarah advised that she was in charge of rebranding the NT and that I had no idea what I was talking about. It was shortly after that that Sarah decided that she was going to follow her friends (who had left at that stage) to go to the Lost Arc to dance. As she was leaving, her shoe broke. Being the gentleman I am, I attempted to fix it to set her back off on her way.

 

Not wanting to seem desperate, I stayed back at Six Tanks with my friend. After 30 mins or so, I decided to walk home and on the way, I stuck my head into the Lost Arc – Sarah and her brood of witches were nowhere to be seen. 

 

The next day, I was in excruciating pain. My leg was so bad, I could hardly walk, I couldn’t sit, and regardless of it being a Saturday night, I decided to check myself into the Emergency Department at the Royal Darwin Hospital. It turned out that I had a spider bite on the back of my leg, of which the infection had started to eat away at my leg. After a week stuck in the hospital, they cut a massive chunk out of my leg and finally set me on my way. As luck would have it, Sarah happened to be at the hospital shortly after I checked out. She called and when I said I had left, she figured I was full of crap. Part of the reason I checked out when I did was so that I could take flight to Adelaide to work for the week at Happy Haven. For the next week, with me letting Sarah know I was now interstate, she had more reason to think I was making up stories to avoid her. She was not convinced in the slightest.

 

Fortunately, when I did come back to Darwin, we eventually managed to go out on a proper date, but that’s a story for another timeslot with a different classification suitable for an Adults Only audience. 

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Benjamin Smith

 

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