Thursday, March 22, 2007

A marriage proposal near-miss

It's perhaps human nature to be entertained (sometimes) by other people's misfortune. We slow down to look at car accidents, laugh at the Darwin awards, and watch soap operas (well, I do two of the three at least).

Likewise, here's a video collection of failed marriage proposals. These guys get seriously slammed!

I have sympathy for them because of the ambivalent response I got from my wife when I asked her to marry me. We had been dating for about 6 months, and I knew that I wanted to marry her. I didn't know if she was ready to say "yes", but I thought I would ask. Well... we were visiting the Gettysburg battlefield (she's a historian after all), and we had a late afternoon picnic overlooking the location of Pickett's charge. I figured that spot had been good for northern males in the past, so why not now. So, I popped the question.

I think that she went through the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance) in about thirty seconds, and then stammered out how nice it was that I asked her and how unready she was to answer. So basically, I got a marital "revise and resubmit."

The funny thing is that I took before and after pictures, wanting to commemorate the happy occasion. Before, she is beaming at the romantic picnic in such a wonderful place (for a historian), and afterwords she looks confused and sour. (When I show them to people now, I just switch the order!)

P.S., happily she said yes a couple months later.

3 comments:

Mathsquatch said...

You slow down at car accidents and watch soaps??? Wow! I'd have guessed you'd read the Darwins...

christopher uggen said...

dang. sweet story, dude. seems like yesterday (or maybe the day before).

Brad Wright said...

Sigh... it wasn't that long ago that I keeping you from your graduate work with never-ending stories of getting the marriage going. Heck, Tor wasn't even six feet tall yet!