Likes babies and toddlers that smile at you.
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The proposal story will be up soon, but it includes a lot of inside jokes that require some explaining, so here’s the background, which might be more interesting than the proposal itself. Read this if you’re interested, or wait for the main story to come soon.
1. The April Fool’s Day Joke: On April Fool’s day 2008, I posted an away message saying I was engaged. About a third of my friends weren’t fooled at all, another third were kind of suspicious, and the last third still hate me to this very day. The day after the prank, I posted a second away message: “Managed to single-handedly offend 30% of her friends with one away message. Actually it shouldn’t have been that hard to figure out I wasn’t really engaged. One simply needed to look out the window and note the lack of flying pigs.”
2. The “Proposal idea of the day” game: At about that time, Jeff and I started making up proposal ideas, and I would rate them on a scale of 1 to 10. (I also rate my friends’ proposals on a scale of 1 to 10, ask me about the top scorers if you’re curious.) This was fun, but most of them weren’t usable because they were either impossible, offensive, or included some kind of physical injury to me. Some of these included:
a. The Red Sox Game – I have an irrational fear of baseball games. I’m convinced that a foul ball will hit me and I’ll die. Therefore, Jeff came up with the idea of taking me to a Red Sox game and arranging for a fly ball to hit me on the head. As I slowly regained consciousness, he would say “This is the ball that hit you,” and hand it to me. And on the ball, would be written the proposal. This proposal idea also spawned a few knockoffs.
i. The Ultimate Frisbee game – We would go to a friend’s ultimate Frisbee game and Jeff would arrange for a Frisbee to knock me out. As I slowly regained consciousness, he would say, “This is the Frisbee that hit you “ . . .
ii. Watching the Boston marathon – Arrange for a runner with a proposal written on the back of his shirt to run off the course and tackle me. As I slowly regained consciousness, . . .
b. The Half Dome (fake) proposal – In July, I hiked the Half Dome in Yosemite National Park with Jeff’s family. It would have been romantic if he had proposed at the top, and there was the additional benefit that Jeff could threaten to push me off if I said no. But even more than the proposal idea, Jeff liked the Half Dome fake proposal idea. For this, we would be hiking up, and when I was really tired and wanting to give up, he’d say “Trust me, you really want to make it to the top, *wink*.” And then when I got to the top and looked at him expectantly, he’d shrug and say “What? I just thought you’d really enjoy the view.”
c. The Snow Proposal – This proposal idea involved drinking a lot of liquid, and waiting for a snowstorm to bring a nice patch of white snow.
d. The Giant Body of Water – Did you know that 90% of proposals take place near a body of water (okay, maybe I made that statistic up)? I once complained to Jeff that guys think that if they propose near a scenic body of water, they assume they don’t have to put any other effort into the proposal. This of course encouraged Jeff to think about proposing in the middle of a trans-Atlantic flight, or in the middle of the desert, depending on his mood.
3. The Countdown – Everybody asks about the countdown at the end of my away messages. This is the back story to how it came about. I decided pretty far back that I didn’t want to date someone for a long time. I didn’t like the idea of dating someone indefinitely and then realizing half a decade later that things weren’t going to work out. Therefore, I decided that I would only date someone for 2.5 years before deciding whether to get married or move on. Jeff knew early on that I had some kind of deadline, but I didn’t tell him what it was — only that at some point, I would give him a “six month warning.” He actually figured out what my timeline was before we reached the two year mark, but still, on our two year anniversary, I gave him this card.[Edit: Sorry, I tried to convert it to jpg, but I couldn’t get it to work. Here’s a link to the pdf version. Sorry about the hassle, but the link is worth following.] That was also when I started posting the countdown at the end of my away messages.
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