Anniversaries Of Sorts

I did mention this to my wife, but a week ago last Saturday, February 15th, marked the 37 anniversary of the date upon which I offered up to my wife the ever so romantic proposal to marry me.  I do suppose that whole thing demands context...

So we met in the fall of 1987.  I had attended the wedding of some friends and watched the Minnesota Twins win a World Series.  I had also run a business selling and building lofts for students at the university I attended.  The business came about through sheer dumb luck, as I believe it's called, because a good friend of mine and I broke the unwritten rules.  

That's a much quicker story - we decided we were going to improve our upcoming dorm rooms by building better lofts.  The rooms we had obtained, on the third floor of Benet Hall at St. Johns, were, like most dorm rooms, quite small.  These rooms were eight feet wide, fifteen feet long, and twelve feet tall.  Each room was dual occupancy, so as you walked in the door, immediately to your left (in my room) was a sink and mirror on the left-hand wall.  Immediately next to the door was a ladder.  At the top of the ladder was a small platform with a single bed.  It was fairly cramped, and matched the bed closer to the back end of the room where there was both a radiator and window.  

We did not like the loft beds that were there, and so, after some consideration, we followed the rules in our "J-Book" the manual that gave every student pretty much the basic rules for school, including lofts.  The rules, then, said that all lofts had to be approved before installation by the head of life safety services.  So we very carefully drew up the ideas we had and presented them to the head of life safety services.  48 hours later we stopped by his office again, and picked up the approved drawings.  We had very carefully entered our names, our dorm rooms, and included all measurements in proper mechanical drawings, because we'd both had a quarter of drafting while in eighth grade, so the plans were beautiful three-view layouts.

What the head of life safety services at the time overlooked was the dorm room.  We'd entered the exact dorm rooms.  It wasn't our fault that he had failed to connect the room number with the fact that those rooms already had lofts.  So when we brought them out to campus and had them fully installed quickly (summers spent doing construction were quite helpful), we were all ready for the inspection.  What we were not ready for was the review which said our lofts were illegal.

We pointed out to the student inspectors that no, the lofts had been approved.  We had to keep the drawings just in case.  So we showed the inspector.  Who said we would have to appeal to keep the lofts.  The appeal was supposed to go to the head of campus safety, but one of my advantages was that, because my father was an employee, I was familiar with the campus organization, and knew that eventually, we were going to end up having to speak with the Vice President of Student Affairs, a man who had worked previously with my father, and who knew my father and my father's current boss very well.  

So, rather than head straight to the correct office, we split the job up.  My friends in the dorm room across the hall went to campus safety, while I went to administration.  I stuck my head in the VP of Student Affairs office, chatted up the student working there, and then he came in.  I explained the problem and said that while I knew there was a proper chain to follow, was there any advice he could give us for proceeding?  Which was how the whole "I'll be there for the appeal meeting" skipped a few links in the chain of command.  So three days later, after classes ended, we sat down in the VP office, and the upshot was that while the J-Book did not say we could not remove an existing loft, we shouldn't have, so we were going to have to keep them safe and clean and reinstall them when we left.  Which we had figured we were going to have to do, so no worries there.

All of that happened in 1986, so in 1987 I was installing lofts I'd built, after I'd advertised myself on the college bulletin boards as an available local resource.  After installing my fourth loft of the year, I went to visit some friends of mine, and while hanging out in their room, I met a few of their other friends, including a young lady in a "Rude Dog" tee shirt, white shorts, and tennis shoes.  She was snarky and fascinating, and, as time went on, we first became friends.  

After school ended in the spring of 1987, we went our separate ways.  I'd had to leave school in February because I couldn't afford it, but we'd stayed in touch.  During that summer I'd been promoted at work, and ended up working every Tuesday through Saturday evenings three weeks out of every four, and the fourth week I worked Sunday, instead of Saturday.  Then they trained me on the Saturday night closing stuff I didn't know, so I was working every Saturday.  

She was working out east, and had tried to call me.  I wasn't home in the evenings most nights, so I missed the calls.  When they came back to school, they stopped by when I was working, asked if I thought their loft design for their dorm room would work.  

The drawing they showed me was a piece of plywood with four legs, made out of 2x4s, nailed onto the plywood.  I gave them a quick off-the-top-of-my-head estimate, they agreed that would be fine, if I could get it done in a week.  The next day, I hit the local lumberyard and picked up some lumber, by the next weekend, I'd had things built, we got them installed.  And my friend offered to make me dinner, if I'd come by.  I arranged for a Friday night off, reserved a VCR, and went to campus with a rented VCR, a couple of movies, and we had dinner.  

Which was how we ended up being a couple.  A few weeks after that evening, she had pulled me aside when we were together with a group of people and asked me "where is this relationship going?"  Thank goodness I had the good sense to say "well, I expect we'll end up married unless I do something stupid."  This did not frighten her off.

But the anniversary of February 15 was a little more accidental than anything else.  For months, we'd been spending all of the time together we could.  We both enjoyed making each other laugh and I had yet to discover Dad jokes.  Or so I was told.  One of the ways we would tease one another was when we would approach a jewelry store.  We'd stand outside and look at the displays, we'd go inside and she would show me the rings that she really liked, and it was a little like playing chicken.

Then she had to work on Valentines day.  It was a Tuesday night, and I was opening that morning so we could go out to dinner that night.  I'd gotten her an off-campus job at Wendy's, the store I'd started out as crew and was eventually promoted to Crew Lead and Assistant Manager.  If you started out as crew in one store, you had to move to a different store, which made it easier.  So I switched to another location, which allowed my old boss to hire her.  What my boss didn't do was give her Valentine's Day off.  So I stopped by a store, picked up a stuffed teddy bear holding a box that was appropriately ring-sized, I realized, after I'd bought it, so I took a piece of paper and wrote on it "what are you looking in here for?" and put the bear on her windshield.  

The next day I was off, so I stopped by and visited, and we ended up going into the grocery store in town.  Then, as we usually did, we headed over to the mall, and played chicken with jewelry stores again.  We found an emerald ring with a few small diamonds on the sides, she really liked it, so we filled out the financing paperwork.  We left the store and headed back to my car.

It was at this point where I pretty much did that stupid thing I figured was inevitable. We were sitting in the car when she said "you do know what this means, don't you?"  As we both very clearly recall, I said "You did want to marry me, didn't you?"  

"Most men usually ask, they don't tell" she educated me, which was quite probably the most important moment of my entire life, in that she didn't take a great deal more (obviously justified) offense at my cavalier attitude.  To be fair, I was required to drop to my knee later that day to propose properly, then the following Sunday night, which I also had off, I had to purchase champagne and snacks for the rest of the gang and repeat the whole thing, this time with witnesses, photography, and booze.  

So, 37 years later, we're semi-empty nesters, with two puppies, two kids, one of whom is married, and ... well, we're doing pretty good. I do manage to put my foot in my mouth on a regular basis, and she does seem to be willing to let me survive, so I guess I've got that going for me.  I can't complain.