Remember back in kindergarten how people would always say that if a boy teases you, that means he likes you? Well fast forward to today’s modern times and we realize that’s actually a super bad message to be sending to our daughters. I mean really — what kind of response is that to having your child tell you they are being bullied by a boy, only to turn it around on them and explain that this is acceptable behavior because he actually likes you!? No wonder society has devolved into the maelstrom it has. Get woke people!
Despite the sexist undertones of the kindergarten analogy, it’s kind of what happened with Brevin & Ilana, the primary differences being:
- This did not occur in kindergarten, but rather between two adults far beyond the schoolyard age (at least in terms of number of years since being born, but perhaps not in general penchant for juvenile behavior)
- The sass, cheekiness, and guff was fairly evenly distributed between the two, with perhaps even Ilana having a slight edge at times (Brevin highly debates this)
So after meeting at work in early 2015, (don’t say Applause, Inc. never did anything for us!) the teasing, the joking, the comedy gold began to unfold, innocently enough. And after a year and a half of being friends, Brevin decides to up and leave the comforts of San Mateo and his job, to take on a role at the incredible Akili Interactive in Marin County. That means he’s now over an hour away from Ilana! And knowing Ilana’s aversion to traffic and tendency for road rage, you’d think the possibility of a relationship was doomed before it even began.
But even Bay Area traffic couldn’t keep these two away. They officially selected January 1, 2017 as their “first date”, mostly to make anniversaries really easy to remember. From then on, every other weekend seemed to be spent either up in Marin or back in San Mateo; not an easy journey for either party. After countless run & rides, trips to the movies on opening weekend, many a-hike, travel near and far, guitar serenades, superb brunches, Jillian Michaels’ exercise videos, ferret-related shenanigans, and more, the pair decided this was more than just your typical ‘boy meets girl, girl and boy make fun of each other for a while, boy and girl get tired of each other after a while and move on’ type situation. This clearly required a lifetime commitment of making fun of each other. And so a proposal loomed…