Fay and I will get married next spring. Here we are with my parents:
Here we are at dinner where my parents took us out:
Here is our engagement sand castle:
Fay's first words, after "oh all right" were, "Goober! You're such a goober."
Let me explain why. Fay was supposed to get a ring Monday night, not Tuesday. The plan was, we would take a romantic moonlit walk down the beach just like one we took a year ago in the same place. There were a lot of vacationers out shooting fireworks [1], which would just perfect the parallel. I could ask her with fireworks going off in the sky and her face lit up by them.
It was not to be. That plan failed, just like many other plans to follow. Dinner ran too late to take an evening walk. A very important game [2] was starting on TV, and it would have been a bad start on our journey together to say, "screw that game and come walk with me." A walk can only be romantic if it is voluntary.
Okay. No problem. The night is young. How about... halftime. We can take the same walk at halftime and transition back to the original plan. The only problem was, when we did step outside, I did not get a chance to sneak the ring into my pocket. So, we had the perfect time, but while I stewed away trying to think of an excuse to go back inside to get the ring, time ran out and we went back inside.
Shoot! But okay. Okay. No problem. The night is still young. We can take a late-night walk and get the plan back on track. So, I goobered next to her while she watched her long-awaited game, trying to get her in a sweet question-popping mood. Alas, the game went bitter. From half time through the rest of the evening, every other thing my beloved said was "stupid football team!" or "get an offensive line!". The mood did not seem right.
Okay. No problem. The week is young. We can go on our romantic walk another night.... Only, now rain was forecast for the rest of the week. You would never, ever, want to take a Fay for a walk in the rain. You may as well throw dirt on her.
Which, as it turned out, was not far from how it went. I gave up on grand plans. At this point, any romantic moment will just have to do. I already failed to get her a ring on my last visit. We had been apart seven weeks, so romantic moments in general were plentiful. I would just wait for the right moment to come along. And this time, I would keep the stupid ring with me!
So when we went down on the beach the next afternoon, and she asked if I wanted to put on a swim suit, I answered, "No, honey, I think I'll stay out of the water this time." So she splashed around some, and we listened to the waves some, and we made a little sand castle, and I said sweet things to her, and she said "aww shucks", and I reached in my pocket, and her eyes got big, and I put something in her hand, and she said, "what are you doing?!", and I asked Fotini Katherine Salvaras [sic] to marry me.
Fay says that I am a goober. All I know is that I have lucked out big time.
