Double Flee A

What can I say?

Her loveliness and I were at dinner at chili's last night (with the fastest-talking waiter of all time), and somehow the subject of marriage came up.

Now, not long ago, she was talking about it quite a lot. I finally told her that if she wanted to get proposed to by an aggravated Dale, this was the way to do it. Not that I was feeling particularly marriage-inclined after the barrage of what I remember calling "agonizing" marriage talk. There is a time for throwing engagement rings and a time for not throwing engagement rings, and she agreed that it would be best if, in this case, civility reigned, and so the subject went away. Obvious alternative modus operandi: A girlfriend of hers mentioned this strategery to her: "once you stop talking about it, it happens!", and it worked.

I said we could just go get the ring right now, the mall being right across the street. We went from the restaurant over to Helzberg diamonds in Rosedale mall (I always get my diamond solitaires from them) with half an hour till nine, when everything shuts down. On the way there she said something about thinking she might be sick to her stomach. I think she meant in a good way though. We got to the store without much time to spare and bellied up to the case-o-rings, a shiny cemetery wherein lie the remains of independence and freedom. Just kidding. It's a hard habit to break.

Her loveliness was, by this time, as graceful a mess of stuttering, emotional confusion as it's ever been my pleasure to behold. She was telling the sales girl about how unexpected this was while I talked watches with one of their salesmen.

It's worth proposing to a girl for what happens to them when you do. Their molecules speed up and they start to fly apart. It's cool to watch.

The helpful sales staff got us all set up and we were on our way, but to where?

Bowling! The first time I tried to ask, my mouth opened but the words were hiding behind my teeth and would not budge. I've long thought and maintained with what I feel was solid reasoning that getting married was a bad idea, so the mental habits that this has created can't be expected to vanish overnight. I closed the good old oral aperture and tried again. This time words came out and she said yes, and we both sat there for a minute at Elsie's trying to figure out what happens next. Then the beer showed up and we knew what to do again. A good time was had by all, meaning the two of us, even though we only had one round and didn't bowl.

If we had bowled I might have wrecked the whole night by beating her (in some of my finer bowling moments I'm touched by the spirit of Roy Munson), or her ring might have come off in a ball and I'd have had to watch her run down the oiled lane and dive in with the pins to get it back. Yes, not bowling was the right thing to do. The establishment gave us the beer free, though I would have paid. It was a beer of love, a beer of continuity, a beer of celebration. It was a summit pale ale.

That's the story of the proposal, anyway. Thanks for checking in and have a good rest of the weekend.

posted by dale @ 9:23 PM