Something special.

You asked, I dragged my feet and thought about it a lot and wrote almost the entire thing in my head and justified why it was taking me so long and then finally, I answered.

In honor of our three-month engagement anniversary, I give you: The Proposal.

Aaaahhh!

If you don’t like adorable stories sprinkled with my insane and hilarious inner thoughts, I suggest you go read something else and come back when I’m talking about celebrity breakups or me going to the gym or trying to make hand-blown glass ketchup bottles becuse I saw it on Pinterest one time.  Otherwise, buckle up.  You’re about to enter THE ENGAGEMENT ZONE.

How to begin?  Full disclosure:  I spent the 6 months before I got engaged painting my nails.  JUST IN CASE.  This might sound weird to you, but I’ve talked to other girls, and it’s been confirmed that I am very, very normal (I won’t say where the random sampling of girls I spoke to were from).  It’s just that at some point you get the feeling that you might maybe sometime get engaged, and just in case, you want to be ready.  Specifically, you want your hands to be ready.  Because trust me on this one, your sanity and your Pinterest page is never really ready to get engaged.  But your hands; they’re a different story.

So I did this for a while, and any time we went out to dinner I was like, hmm, mayyyyybe?  And then Keenan would show up in shorts or something, and I’d be like, ok, no.  If you know Keenan you know that he wouldn’t propose in shorts.  It’s just – trust me.

So those things are happening, and then this one week in April comes along and it’s nothing special.  Keenan & I were supposed to get dinner together on Monday, and then I had to cancel on him due being stuck at work.  Ditto for Tuesday.  Finally Wednesday rolls around and I’m like, my boyfriend’s going to hate me because here I am, cancelling on him again.  I had to stay late in court and didn’t get home until almost 9pm.  So that was a no go, too.  So Keenan says that Thursday we should try to get to the Movie Tavern and do the dinner PLUS and movie thing at once, since we are 85 years old and are literally incapable of sitting through a movie when we’ve just eaten.  We love Movie Tavern (you should totally check it out) and so I thought that would be a good way to spend the ONLY night we got to see each other that week.  Keenan says he’ll take care of everything and he’d figure out which movie and get the tickets online, that way I’d just have to actually make it home from work on time (miracle) and be ready to leave (is there something that’s even more impressive than a miracle? That.).

He comes to pick me up and he gets to my house at like 6:30.  This never happens.  We’re both ALWAYS late.  But he says it’s because the manager of the Tavern said we could do BYO tonight, and we had to get there by 7 because he had to clear it with his staff.  Whatever.  You might think this is odd, but for me, this is Thursday.  Keenan is always telling people, “I’m in the business,” which I think means restaurant business (unless he wants people to think he’s in the Irish mafia, I don’t know), so this didn’t seem weird to me.  “Keenan,” I said,” We’re not special.  We don’t need special treatment.  Why do you always try to do this?”  I am the nicest girlfriend ever.  He said that his boss had given him some champagne and he wanted us to have that, and they don’t have champagne at Movie Tavern.  Fine. “Just don’t tell my parents,” I told him. “I don’t want them to think we think we’re fancy and special.”  I don’t know why I was on a “special” word kick, but I was, and believe me, I immensely regret it.

Back to the champagne.  This was also not weird for me, because sometimes we do drink champagne with dinner instead of wine (because we’re nerds and we say we’re “celebrating love.”  Cue eye-rolling).  So we’re driving there and I’m being my charming self, complaining that, in addition to us “not being special,” Keenan also didn’t pick a movie, didn’t pre-order the tickets as promised, the only available movie at the time we were going was Jurassic Park in 3D and I thought that was a stupid waste of money, and Keenan didn’t even know that was the case because he obviously hadn’t even looked at the movie times, and that he almost hit the car in front of us because he was so distracted.  “You almost killed me!” I exclaimed dramatically.  “Are you sorry?!” Yes, Keenan was probably thinking, right now I am very, very sorry.  Now, if we were headed to dinner, and Keenan was acting this jumpy, I would have suspected something was up.  But this was the movies. People don’t get engaged at the movies.  I didn’t even paint my nails.  I was wearing jeans.  So I just went along with it.  Being a huge pain in the ass in the process (in Keenan’s words, “30 more questions like the ones you were asking and you would have blown the whole thing.”  So that’s sweet.).

We get there, and we talk to the manager, who takes our bottle of champagne.  We check out the available movies, and the only one we actually want to see is Olympus Has Fallen.

Because Morgan Freeman was meant to narrate our engagement.

But it’s at 9:15!  To my dismay, Keenan agrees to see a movie that isn’t for another 2 hours, and we buy the tickets.  The man at the front desk says, “Do you guys want a tour of the theater?” and I’m like, “What? No. We’re good.”  “Are you sure?” he asks, “Since it’s your first time?”  I looked at Keenan, confused. “We’re here all the time,” I said to the guy.  “Thanks anyway, though.”  Keenan & I head over to the bar/restaurant part of the theater and check out the menus.  “Was that guy so weird?” I asked Keenan.  “Who wants a tour of a movie theater?”  So we order drinks and are checking out the apps and don’t you know the guy shows up again!  “Are you ready for your tour of the theater?”  I’m about to tell him that I am absolutely positive I know how to effectively watch a movie when Keenan says we should just be nice because they’re letting us BYO.  No, Keenan, I wanted to say.  They’re letting YOU BYO.  I just wanted to be normal.  NOT SPECIAL.   If you were wondering why someone would propose to me, take this as an example of my attractive grace and charm.

I get up, grudgingly, and follow the guy into an empty theater.  You think this is odd, right? You think, oh, come on, Sandi, you knew.  Well, no.  No, I didn’t.  Keenan is always getting us into these situations, because of the being special thing.  We’re always  exploring the closed-to-the-public floor of the restaurant, or dancing in the ballroom of a wedding venue alone without music because Keenan decided to sneak in, or being invited to the Academy Awards red carpet event.  Two of those things have really happened.  The other one I made up because it’s funny and also I WISH.  So this was just one more unexpected occurance. Plus, as you may recall, whenever I was out and thought we might be getting engaged, we didn’t, so I was working on not letting myself think that and then having the entire night be me, sad that I’m not special, because ok, fine, I want to be special!

This tour is super awkward. “This is one of our medium-sized theaters,” our impromptu tour guide says to us, as I glare at Keenan and sip my skinny girl margarita (yes, I brought it with me).  Tour guide looks at me as if for a response.  “Mmmmm,” I respond interestedly, wondering what else it is I could say, and what else it is he could possibly show us.  Just when I thought that had concluded the tour, I was wrong.  “Are you familiar with the seats?” the guide asked, clearly grasping.  “With seats?” I said.  “Like…you sit…in them?  Yes, we’re familiar with seats.”  Keenan is acting as though this is all very normal and not like this guide is about to pull out a chainsaw and reenact a very gory horror film for his own enjoyment.  “What movie is playing in here?” Keenan asked the guy.  Well, wouldn’t you know it, it’s Olympus Has Fallen, and it’s playing in 20 minutes.  We’re a little early, but sure, we can just have a seat and watch this one instead.  So we sit.

If you’ve ever been early to the movies, you know that sometimes there are questions on the screen for you to answer because God knows we don’t know how to entertain ourselves anymore.  There are TVs at the gas pumps.  We are ridiculous.  But as we’re sitting there, the screen says, “How well do you know your date?” For a brief moment, I think, hmm, this is weird, but then the first question pops up and it’s so average and not about us that I quickly remind myself not to start thinking anything crazy and also, my nails aren’t even done.  The screen says, “What’s your date’s favorite color?” “GREEN!!!!!!!!” Keenan shouts out at the top of his lungs. “My favorite color is not green, Keenan,” I say, “that’s yours.”  Poor guy.  The next question asks about favorite kind of food; then, where your date would most like to travel.  Ooh, that’s a good one, and we start talking about it.  Suddenly, Keenan interrupts and says “You’re going to miss the next question!”

And yes, ladies, and gentlemen (as if I’ve retained any gentlemen at this point in this lengthy story) – the screen said this:

Sandra, will you marry me?

I KNOW.

I’m still dying.

I freeze in shock.  For a split second, I think, Does he know about this? Did he bring a ring? I know I didn’t bring a ring.

I turn my head to look at him very slowly and he looks like he is in on this.  PHEW.

I’ll spare you the mushy details, but he got down on one knee and thank goodness it was in front of my seat, because if I weren’t sitting down I think I would have collapsed.  Apparently I wouldn’t stop talking while he was proposing and although I can’t remember most of what I said, I do recall asking, “Is this real life?” so yes, I did quote David After Dentist during my proposal.

We called his parents and told mine in person, and lo and behold, my mother had already been buying us engagement gifts for two years, because she “had a feeling.”  I don’t know if she should get a job as a fortune teller, because a two-year span doesn’t really qualify as a feeling.

And you know all the rest.  Happy 3 month engagement anniversary to us 🙂  And guess where we’re going to celebrate!