You’re gonna do what?? (a la Merlin from Top Gun)

Yes, that was pretty much what 85% of my conscious self screamed at me the day I realized I was going to propose to Kim. I’d decided that I was going down the dark road that is marriage when I went back to visit my parents in January/February of ’06 to see these little guys.

I think they were secretly pleading with me not to do it, which I mistook for just plain old “man’s-best-friend” behavior. But the dogs were totally worth the vacation. Nonetheless, I still remember sitting across the table from my parents in their sweet early 1900s house that overlooks New Jersey from Pennsylvania and saying, “so yeah… I think I’m going to ask Kim to marry me…”

Now the question became how the heck to do it. Propose at Disneyland? While it would be perfect for a girl like Kim, I wanted something a little different. So alright, what else embodied Kim? Ear surgery… okay that one’s off the list. A bright yellow car… yeah, not proposing in a bright yellow Ford Focus with fairies all over it. UCLA… … could I get the UCLA marching band to play “Here comes the bride?” as I propose to Kim? … maybe, but I have a feeling that Kim would end up sprinting in the opposite direction… that and nothing screams romance like an 8-clap cheer. Okay, UCLA band was out, but I still kinda liked the whole UCLA theme. So what else UCLA was there? The Rose Bowl. Associated with both flowers and UCLA football. Plus, my company was the primary author of the Environmental Impact Report for the conversion of the Rose Bowl into a NFL stadium (that one’s not going to happen – so don’t get your hopes up… or down). And that meant that we had some contacts at the stadium that might be willing to help us out. So, we’ve got sports, romance, and an in? Bingo. I later asked the PM of the EIR if she could set something up between me and the stadium that would let me onto the field (when it was empty) to pop the question. Okay, June 9th and 16th are available. Sweet… that’ll be perfect.

Let’s fast forward through March and a bit of April that were filled with a ton of ring shopping. Seriously folks, I’m pretty sure that towards the end I could tell you clarity and color that year without any help from the sales clerk. But then, during the second week of April, I get a call from my buddy at the Rose Bowl. “Okay, you’re all set for this Friday” … … ummm, what? I thought I still had two months? “It’s got to be this Friday,” he said. So that sends ringless, plan-free Chris into a spiral. Thanks to whomever is controlling my little puppet strings for typing in the words “blue nile” on Internet Explorer. The guy on the other end of the phone (at Blue Nile) pretty much saved my life, although you could definitely picture him flipping the receiver off at my statement “I need the ring the day after tomorrow.” The rest of the conversation went something like this…
Him: Seriously? You need this by Thursday?
Me: I’m proposing on Friday, so yeah, it’s kind of a necessary item.
Him: How about Friday morning?
Me: Can you guarantee that? I’m due at the stadium by 11:00, and I’m driving her there.
Him: I’ll have the ring, all ready to go and at your door, by 9:30. Does that work?
Me: I can’t believe I’m saying this, but okay.
Him: Tell me about it. I’ve been working for this company for two years, and you are my strangest call to date.
Me: Thanks?
So Friday morning rolls around, and I’m patiently (and by patiently, I mean pacing around the apartment and checking all the clocks to see if even a single one of them says 9:30 yet) waiting for the ring to arrive. Sure enough, at 9:25 FedEx knocks on my door. I think I spent a grand total of five seconds inspecting the ring before jumping in the car to go pick up Kim.

Now Kim, on the other hand, had no clue what was going on. I had only told her to plan for a night away and to dress comfy casual. So when I finally roll up, she’s just relaxing and strolling around after finishing classes for the day. What I didn’t know at that point was that her graduate school friends had actually figured things out… and despite them saying to Kim as she was leaving class “he’s gonna propose,” Kim had insisted that there was nothing going on. At any rate, Kim gets in the car and we start on our journey north on the 405 (yes, Nor-Cal peeps, freeways get a “the” in front of them down south… You may think it’s “hella” stupid, but I’m sticking to it.)
“I need to stop off on take some pictures for work,” I said to Kim. “At the Rose Bowl.”
“Oh, what are you guys doing?” she asked.
“We need to do some supplemental work for a few changes to the project (NFL renovation of the Rose Bowl), and I promised Alison that I’d stop by and take them for her,” I lied.

During this time, I was actually quite mystified that Kim hadn’t noticed the sweat pouring from my hands onto the steering wheel or the strategically selected soundtrack for our ride, but after about five minutes, I realized that, in both cases, this wasn’t a bad thing. So we parked next to the stadium in a space that fans can only dream about when coming to UCLA football games and walked through the front gate. I made my way to the business office to let them know that we were there and to figure out how the heck to get on the field. It turns out that we needed to be escorted, which, as you’ll see, turned out to be a good thing. Ooooo… almost forgot to mention, I had hidden the ring in a pseudo-secret, velcro-concealed compartment of my camera bag (I’d brought the camera, too). So Charles (our guide) leads us down one of the main tunnels to the field – “you can’t stand on the field, though” he says. “What?” “No one’s allowed on the field except during events and for maintenance. The best I can offer you is the concrete walkway around the field – at ground level.” Okay, fine, so I’m essentially standing in the stadium’s stormwater collection system, but we’re here, right? … … keep going, Chris. Keep going.

Now you might be wondering what Kim was doing at this point… two words. Mmmmmm grass. That’s right, the smell of the Rose Bowl’s freshly manicured field had so completely entranced my soon-to-be fiancée that she had no clue what I was discussing with our guide. At this point, Charles holds back a bit to let me go forward with the actual proposal. Kim, on the other hand, thinks that I’m going to start taking pictures, so she hangs back with Charles… and continues smelling the grass. “Kim, can you help me for a sec?” Now, I never saw Kim in her Goofy costume at Disneyland, but I’m pretty sure I saw her do Goofy’s saunter when I called her over.

So I’ll be honest, at this point, I’m pretty much shaking all over. And I had spent the better part of the week memorizing my proposal… and promptly forgot it as the words came out of my mouth. Except for the first few lines – “It was one year, one month, and 6 days ago that I met a girl. And who would’ve guessed that just a short time after our first cookie, we’d be here.”

Now it was time for the one knee bit, but just before that happened, Kim realized just what the heck was going on. I missed the part where she brought her hands up to her face and closed her eyes. In case you didn’t know, Kim is a pretty tall girl, so when she opened her eyes, I was already down on one knee and out of her immediate field of vision. She later told me her initial reaction was “where the #$%@ did he go?” … and then she looked down. There I was stammering on for the better part of two minutes and trying to make it through this all-so-important speech that I had prepared. But when I looked up for Kim’s answer, all that made it out was a closed mouth gurgle that she contends was a yes and a nod of the head. … good enough for me. So after a few hugs and tears (on her part – totally on her part :P), Charles was nice enough to take a few pictures with the stadium in the background.

After the proposal, I’d planned on talking Kim to the botanical gardens where we could walk around and call everyone. But she was a fountain of happiness at this point (tears were free-flowing). So while I went in to buy tickets, Kim stayed outside to call her parents. What we didn’t think about was that Kim’s “happy” tears were incredibly difficult to talk through. Let me back up for a second, when the rush of “you’re proposing this Friday” happened, my ability to go to Monterey and ask for parental permission to marry their daughter went out the window. So I had to resort to a phone call. It wasn’t ideal, but I think Kim’s dad made it up for it by milking my nervousness a bit (there was a part during the conversation where I distinctly remember hearing Kim’s mom say in the background “Richard, stop it. Be nice!”) So then back to the botanical gardens… since Kim was unable to enunciate very well through the tears, all her parents were hearing were the tears and “happy” sobs (which as I understand it can easily be misunderstood for the other, unhappy kind.) Now, I’m not sure which one of them said it (MIL or FIL) but after a few rounds of “happy” tears, one of them blurted through the madness “What did Chris do wrong?” :P Nothing… nothing at all. Quite the opposite, in fact. Or so I think.