Before you leave judgment in comments, just remember that I already know I’m a HUGE dork/nerd.
Anyway, it all started like this. I had the thoughts that I had here, and I knew it was time to buy the ring. Luckily, I had been researching rings for months, so I knew exactly what I was looking for. But the ring I was purchasing was being purchased sight unseen. That’s right. I had never seen it before. I bought it from Amazon.
Before you go into convulsions over how I could buy something so important over the internet, I offer a few reasons: 1) It’s 2005 people! It’s okay to use the internet to buy things! 2)The ring on Amazon was SUBSTANTIALLY cheaper than in a jewelry store. It was so cheap that I tell people, “Compared to the price of a similar ring in a jewelry store, I got my ring from a guy, who knows a guy, who gets stuff that fell off the back of a truck.” 3) No pushy salespeople. 4) Because of all the research I did, I knew exactly what the ring would look like. Did you know you can tell how much the ring will sparkle based on the % Table size in comparison to the % Depth?*
Consider that Evidence of Dorkdom, exhibit A.
When I got the ring I made final revisions on a sonnet (Shakespearian, not Italian/Petrarchan) I had been working on, and placed the ring and the sonnet near my bed.
Consider the sonnet exhibit B.
I was going to read the sonnet to ACWGF after we had slept in on a Saturday, and give her the ring at the end of the sonnet. This didn’t exactly work out as planned, because little Miss Thing** was hungover from the previous night’s carousing. I didn’t think a proposal to someone whose breath smelled like I imagine an ashtray might taste would be romantic, so I held off until she was capable of standing under her own power.
We finally got going later in the day, and my buddies Kmart, and Matt were hanging around. Good friends, yes, but I didn’t want them there for something as personal as a proposal, so I faked a stomach ache and waited for them to leave.
About 20 minutes later they left to go get Matt’s car. I got up, went into my room, put the ring in my back pocket, and grabbed the sonnet. I came back into the living room and told ACWGF that I wrote her a poem at work, and asked if would she like to hear it.
Here is the conversation that followed:
“Why don’t you just give it to me so I can read it?”
“I’d like to read it to you, if you don’t mind.”
“(sigh)… fine.”
“Could you come over here and sit next to me?”
“Jeez! Why can’t I just sit over here?”
“Humor me.”
“(ANGRY SIGH) Fine.”
She stomped over to me indignantly, practically threw herself down onto the couch, and stared at me impatiently. I thought about how much I could rub that in later, and I started reading. The sonnet was about all the nicknames I have for her, so she had no idea what I had written in the last 2 lines. One line that I was particularly proud of was this one:
Petite Fromage is cheesy French for [Name]
Another thing I was proud of was that I had left a syllable, or beat, off of the last line in the poem:
[Name-name Name-name] will you be my wife?
There are only 9 syllables there (two syllables per first and last name), and the traditional sonnet would have 14 lines of iambic pentameter, which is a line of 10 syllables with an alternating stressed/unstressed rhythm. That empty beat/syllable is for her to respond affirmatively to my request in the sonnet. She blew it by saying, “Of course,” instead of “Yes.” Too many syllables, what a shame. Count the fact that I had considered her response as a syllable, and that I just explained that I did that as Exhibit B1 and B2.
I asked her if she noticed that there was a syllable missing after she stopped crying a few minutes later.
“What?”
“I left a syllable off the last line for your response.”
“Huh?”
“The sonnet. I didn’t complete the pentameter of the last line. I left out a syllable where the last foot should have been for your response.”
“What are you talking about?”
“(2 minute refresher course on our English 301 class where we learned about all the stuff that’s making me look like a huge nerd right now.)”
“Of course I didn’t notice! I was too busy being overjoyed accepting your proposal. You big nerd!”
And that’s the educational, dorked-out story of how I proposed. Not exactly white horses, sunset, string quartets, fireworks, champagne, roses, or getting down on one knee, but romantic to us all the same.
*The closer the %Table and %Depth are in actual number (e.g. 75 table, 78 depth) the more sparkle you’ll get. However, the two numbers can’t go outside the range of 65 and 85 or else the sparkle will be dulled. See? I told you I knew my stuff.
**I’ve taken to calling her a “Triflin’ Ho”
