So I’m engaged. Now by contractual obligation, Christine Claire LaPointe will at some point become Christine Claire Zasada. Kind of has a chilly ring, doesn’t it?

Yes, I’m engaged to, in my objective opinion, the most beautiful, smartest, and cutest woman on the face of the Earth. Despite the risk of losing a significant portion of the male and lesbian population to suicide, I’m planning on going through with this, so tough luck, you had your chance.

Obviously, I’m overjoyed with this revelation, even though it’s actually old news. While the engagement was official on March 30^th, our six year anniversary as a couple, I actually proposed to Christy over a month before hand, in an unceremonious and, most of all, ring-less way. But for now, I’d like to tell the story of our relationship.

Like most high school nerds, I never had much luck with the opposite sex. I can chalk this up to appearance (shockingly, overweight, average-looking guys aren’t considered a catch in high school), my social status (none), or my personality (I wasn’t mean, but definitely introverted and increasingly bitter as the years went on). That doesn’t mean I didn’t make an honest effort; I asked girls to dances and talked with a few of them, but they never threw themselves at me, and they never wanted to be more than “just friends.” The closest I came to a girlfriend turned into a perspective-changing experience that became the basis for my short story Band Girl. It came to a point where I wanted to shout at one of the “just friends” girls “I don’t WANT anymore friends! I want a girlfriend to smooch with!” Ah, the innocent days of high school.

It’s somewhat ironic then that I met my future wife because of such rejection. This turn of events came about when I tried asking Meredith Peterson, the chemistry teacher’s daughter, out on a date. To some, this might seem like scraping the bottom of the barrel, because while Meredith was fairly cute and nice, she definitely had some issues relating to other students, so it seemed like a match made in Heaven. It was nothing overt, but just enough to make me wonder how she would react when I talked to her. So basically, even the weird girl didn’t want to go out with me.

Instead, she employed the ancient girl technique of hocking me off on some other girl. There’s a deeply embedded social law which states every single girl is eligible to date any single guy and has a responsibility to either date him or suggest other candidates. It’s up to the girl to either have a good excuse not to date a particular guy (“I hate you” is not a good excuse. “I’m being executed for treason this weekend because I divulged key tactical information to Al Qaeda insurgents” is acceptable) and/or direct the guy’s attention to another girl.

So Meredith directed my attention to an unassuming Freshman who was in the marching band. She was at the time probably not the kind of girl anyone would pick out of a crowd. She was small, quiet, shy, and a classifiable grade geek. I only vaguely recognized her, despite the fact that I was in band, though I was two grades ahead of her and in a different period. Still, I thought I’d give it a shot, so I called her.

If you haven’t guessed it by now, this innocent Freshman was Christine Claire LaPointe.

We had a lengthy conversation, spouting the usual flippant information that people do when they’re required to tell other people about themselves. I did most of the talking, since her near-perpetual silence didn’t lend well for a conversation. We decided to go out on a date, so, wanting to make an impression, I suggested something dynamic and unexpected, so we went to a movie.

Considering the one-sidedness of our conversation, this was probably for the best. We decided on seeing The Whole Nine Yards, because I was banking on the fact that she had a little sense of humor, though she probably would have gone to anything, because she would have had to make waves to object, and making waves is not Christy’s thing, even to this day, unless it’s with me.

I remember it was cold that night, because she was wearing a distinctly noisy pleather coat that still might be grinding in her closet. We saw the movie at a now-closed movie theater, I took her home, and that was about it. No smooth moves from either side.

The second date was actually more uncomfortable than the first, because I made a dire tactical miscalculation and suggested we go out to eat and GET TO KNOW EACH OTHER. This required some speaking on her part, which, if you’ve been tuned in, was not a notable skill she brought to the table. We ate at a justifiably now-defunct Mexican/Italian restaurant in town, where I distinctly remember reaching for her untouched drink because I was really thirsty, due to all of the talking on my end, and embarrassingly pausing to ask if it was okay if I took a drink. To this day, I still think this was a really stupid maneuver, but Christy doesn’t even remember it, and I’ve since gotten over my fear of stealing her drinks without asking.

We then walked over to the local Miss Cue (which, by the way, is also now closed) to shoot some pool and have more awkward silence. I wouldn’t know until years later, but a single clumsy maneuver on my part turned out to be a factor in Christy’s eventual love for me. She had never played pool before, and didn’t know how to hold the cue. I tried to show her, but she was still confused, so I figured the best way to do it would be to place her hands with mine. Not wanting to seem too forward, I asked her “Can I touch you?” before I actually did.

In retrospect, this seems like a really idiot thing to say, but I realize that, at the time, I wasn’t at all used to touching women, and I didn’t want to make Christy, who was as nervous as a squirrel on speed at that point, think I was trying grope her right in the pool hall. Years later, she told me that she thought what I said was really sweet. We can conclude that pathetic nerdiness does have its advantages.

On the third date, we went to the park. My plan was to take her to a place in the middle of the forest my friends and I would hang around (which I dubbed “Jenova Point;” a Final Fantasy VII reference) and ask her what she thought of me. This was the place where I got my first kiss from the last attempted girlfriend, so I figured lightening could strike twice if I prayed for it.

I got to the park early and waited for her in a parking lot. Soon, her mother dropped her off, who I later identified as Christy’s grandmother, due to her gray hair. After setting the tone with such a brilliant observation, we went on our walk.

When it was time to ask her about our relationship, I had no idea how to proceed, and I didn’t want to wreck a potential friendship by planting an unwanted kiss on her. I figured if the answer wasn’t positive, at least I wouldn’t make a complete fool out of myself. So when we got to Jenova Point, I asked her my question, and it should come as no surprise that she told me that she thought of me as just a friend.

I’d like to point out that, due to some virtuoso in the park planning committee, the area Jenova Point has since been partially destroyed in some kind of bizarre nature restoration project, forcing horny teenagers to find other habitats to make out in.

I sort of expected it. I hadn’t exactly swept her off her feet with my bumbling, and she was pretty wrapped up in her school work and grade point average. I wasn’t crushed, because I knew we weren’t hitting it off, so I decided to stop fooling myself and we stopped having dates. Still, while waiting for her mother to pick her up, I decided to ask Christy to an upcoming dance, even though I knew my chances of scoring (in the sense of kissing, you pervert) were next to nothing, not that they would have been much better anyway. Still, she would go to the dance with me, so I figured at least I would have a friend to hang around with while C bungled around trying to get girls to dance with him.

I can’t say Christy and I were especially close friends afterwards. I heard at one point that she expressed disappointment that I didn’t go on a marching band trip to Florida, which puzzles me to this day, because I knew if we actually hung around each other, we wouldn’t do much besides awkwardly sit around. I made the idiot mistake of taking C’s first ex-girlfriend to the prom instead of Christy, figuring I had more of a chance with her. It’s one of those decisions that I regret, because that was that much less time spent with Christy, plus I was being used as part of a revenge scheme against C on the part of his ex (he was a bigger jerk in those days than he is now), not to mention I didn’t get anywhere with her.

Christy and I fell out of contact over the summer, though as I entered my Senior year, we started seeing each other again. I remember apologizing for not contacting her, but she was understanding, and said she could have contacted me. Looking back, Senior year was a fresh start for both of us.

That year, I had quit marching band to pursue other classes, and Christy was apparently upset about that. Not one to read the signs, I spent time with her, but didn’t considering making any moves. That is, until a particular idiotic dandelion-head friend decided to harass her into dating me early in the school year. She told him that if I invited her to my upcoming eighteenth birthday party, she would go out with me, so of course I told her to come on over. Right now.

Honestly, I didn’t expect anything, and I wasn’t going to impose a relationship on her because of something the dandelion head, a known troublemaker and pathological liar, had told me. Although she walked around in a two-piece swimsuit, and the water was pretty cold, I didn’t ogle her at all. The other perverts in attendance, however, pointed the consequences of the cold water on a woman's upper-anatomy to me later on.

I’m not sure if her invitation to the party had anything to do with it, but over Senior year, I started hanging around her during study hall and carrying her books between classes. It was odd, but at the time, I had no ulterior motives, no desire to get into her pants (a term that, when applied to my plight, meant getting a smooch). I was just being a nice guy and spending time with a friend.

With my Senior year about half over and still without a girlfriend, I resolved myself not to worry about it too much. I still had not come to terms with the fact that I wouldn’t be going to high school after I graduated (a fact that took years to sink in), so the thought never occurred to me that I could be trying to date college girls the next year, which may or may not have affected the gradual course of events. As far as I was concerned, I was going to be in high school forever, so I might as well take it easy and just do what I want. So one day, I casually asked Christy if she would go on a date with me, almost a year after the last one.

She accepted, and we were off to the same movie theater we had our first date at. This time, we saw The Family Man, which was noteworthy because of the pang of embarrassment I felt when the onscreen nudity popped up. I have to admit, without the pressures of having a date with the motives attached, and with the benefit of months of friendship, the date went well.

After that, events sort of jumbled together. At one point, Christy volunteered to go to my Senior prom with me if I didn’t have a girlfriend by that time. I thought it was a nice gesture, but my friend, Bob, saw it as a sign that she wanted to start dating. He told me in no uncertain terms that she was inserting herself as the role of my girlfriend. Since I was a stupid awkward high school nerd, I wasn’t too sure, so Bob decided to talk to Christy on my behalf. So, yeah, I basically passed a note to her after third period.

The three of us went out for some laser tag one night, and it was at that point that Bob did his investigation. He reported that she did, in fact, like me, but didn’t have time for a relationship because of school. He told her that all I really needed was someone to hold and be close to. This is a completely bizarre concept if you knew Bob, whose idea of fine art was hitting things with sticks. He has since had a career in public relations at the National Socialist Movement (read: Nazis) and has gone on to the Army to become a soulless killing machine. How far he has traveled…

So anyway, Bob gave me the go-ahead, so I started trying to figure out ways to approach the situation. I’m not sure how I did it (sorry, no sure-fire tips for winning women over, geeks and nerds), but Christy and I eventually started talking about a relationship. Her argument was that she didn’t have time, but I countered by saying a relationship doesn’t have to demand immense amounts of time, and she wasn’t really losing anything by being close to someone. She thought that made sense, and I realized I might, at long last, have a shot at having a girlfriend.

On March 22^nd, I went to Columbus for a Business Professionals of America contest on behalf of the school for two days of business bliss. Since the hotel was packed with BPA members from around the state, and with one elevator out of service, I built up a great resistance to walking, courtesy a tenth floor room and countless flights of stairs.

Before I had left, I asked Christy if she wanted to go to the local Big Boy (which might as well close, since their food is terrible these days) the Friday I got back. I only bring the BPA up because I used the walking endurance to walk about two miles to get to the restaurant without feeling it, only to be hampered by dashing across an intersection for a total of twenty feet. Trust me, it’s weird stuff like this you remember during events that change your life. Plus, it wasn’t the last time that I walked a mile or two just to see her.

After eating and showing off a medal I had won at the event (fifth place state for extemporaneous speech; whoopee), we went outside and waited for her mother to pick her up. It was at this point that we started an odd conversation about getting closer, and I said, while putting my hand on her shoulder, that if I did anything to offend her, that she should slap me. Christy jokingly replied that putting my hand on her shoulder was grounds for a slapping, and I just smiled.

After that, I decided I had to make a move. We planned a date the following Friday, the 30^th of March, and I resolved that if things didn’t work out, I would give up looking for a girlfriend and live as a miserable bachelor for the rest of my life. Not to put too much retrospective pressure on Christy.

March 30^th came, and Christy agreed to meet me at a (surprise!) now-closed local restaurant called Wilson’s, which was a short walk from my house. If at this point you’ve noticed the pattern of our first few date places closing or being destroyed, it’s something that I only noticed while putting together this article. Christy and I just hope it’s not an indication of our future together…

Anyway, the plan was to walk back from the restaurant and get things moving on the porch. How I was going to get things moving, I had absolutely no idea, but hey, at least I had something vaguely resembling a plan, which is all that counted.

I decided to cool off the afternoon before the big evening, so some friends and I went to the park and wreaked some good-natured havoc. Then, as we were walking down one of the trails, someone called from behind “Is that Chris?”

It was Christy, who was in the park for track practice. Upon hearing her voice, I lightheartedly replied, without looking back, “Is that my date?” to which the slower-witted of my two friends answered, with complete sincerity, “Yes.”

Christy and I made small talk and reconfirmed the plans for the evening. So the afternoon passed, and we went to Wilson’s for drinks (by which I mean soda, because I was eighteen and not all that cool), where we (for which I mean I) had a very passionate discussion about a fluff article that appeared in the school newspaper about Oregon being a perfect utopia, and the real world was waiting to kill all of its citizens the moment they stepped out of the city lines (Pocky Box aficionados will remember this classic piece). We then went back to my house, having a conversation about an exocentric girl who identified herself as a “Shinto Catholic.” The conversation immediately came to a halt, however, when we reached Mission Objective Point: the porch.

I’m not sure if I actually planned out what to say once we got there, but the words keenly flowed like water through a clogged drain. Yet I somehow sputtered out something comprehensible, though, when viewed from a cooler head, still sounded kind of dumb. I looked into Christy’s eyes and said, “You’ve really become a part of my life.”

Yet, somehow, she didn’t burst out in a violent fit of laughter and stomp my ego flat. Instead, she answered, “You’ve become a part of my life, too.” As she finished, we embraced, and as I stood there on the porch on that warm March night, a notion flashed through my head, a kind of urging that has only come one time since that night, and I pulled back from Christy and kissed her.

I remember thinking “Wow, I can’t believe I’m doing this again!” This was a sentiment leftover from the last time I kissed a girl for the first time, which was over a year ago and didn’t turn out well. All of my experience from that incident was now culminating into this one point in time, the time when I would finally have someone to call my own.

After the kiss, we went inside. She called her mother to arrange a pickup time, and I went to the bathroom about three times, courtesy of my nerves of foam. We sat on the couch, I put my arm around her and she rested her hand on my knee, and watched The Slayers together, though I couldn’t tell if she was just being polite at that point. All I was thinking was “Wow! A girlfriend!”

Her mother later picked her up, and I went to kiss her, but she turned and I got her on the cheek. I don’t remember anything else that night, but the next morning, I woke up thinking, very gravely, “What have I done?”

For those of you who found my single-minded desire to get a girlfriend, any girlfriend, a bit shallow, I concede that you might be right. I think all of the buildup that was mounting for years had finally come crashing down, and now that I finally had a girlfriend, I suddenly didn’t know what to do with her. The entire concept was foreign, and I think that’s why our first year was our worst.

Later, she told me she was giddy about what happened for the entire weekend, and after the shock had subsided, I was happy, too. But as time passed, the relationship started running its course. It was obvious we were both uncertain about it, as evidenced by a conversation we had where I had to assure Christy that I wasn’t going to leave her “if someone better came along.” I’m sure that statement sounded as comforting and affirming as Kevorkian trying to assure his patients they would be back home and feeling good as new in no time.

That’s not to say we didn’t develop over time. We got more comfortable with each other and enjoyed spending time together, and I eventually told her, in my famous drawn-out and discomfited way, that I loved her. We did start fooling around a little, but not too far, because we both wanted to wait until marriage. I had to stick this part in case any family or clergy is reading. That’s partially why the rest of you aren’t getting any juicy details.

Like any inelegant high school relationship, though, there was that illusive something missing, and I think we both knew it. Light conversation and making out could only carry a relationship so far, and the absence of that something began to take its toll. It led me to wonder if I had any business at all dating Christy.

The next fall, I had started college, and was working at pizza parlor and arcade called Major Magic’s. It was not a fun job, with low pay, high stress, no training, and a thirty-two mile round trip. The only benefit was the free pizza and game tokens. One night, I had two extra pizzas, and I decided I missed Christy, so I brought them over to her house. I’m not sure if it was because I was tired, but when she teasingly said that she expected me to bring free pizza every night, I took the comment as a lack of gratitude and left.

The next night, I was really upset, so I went over to her house and asked her to talk to me in my car. I told her that I was hurt by her comment the last night, and felt that she wasn’t grateful enough towards me. I don’t remember much about the conversation from that point, but according to Christy, I said that I was at one point thinking of breaking up with her. She later told her mother what had happened and indicated that if I did end it, she wouldn’t care.

Things went like this for a few months. I would be sitting in class, thinking the relationship wasn’t working out, and maybe we would make better friends than lovers. I even told Christy this once, and she was upset about it. I stewed over that missing something for months, until one day, a week before our first Valentine’s Day, she called me up one night. She told me we had to stop.

I was confused by this, so Christy explained that we had to stop fooling around. She said that she, being Catholic, didn’t feel close to God anymore, and we had to stop doing sinful things. The rational part of my brain told me that I wasn’t petty enough to break up with her because she wouldn’t put out, but that didn’t stop me from pleading my case. In the end, the backseat shenanigans had to stop, and I accepted this.

The next evening, I was home alone when I was taken with a feeling of rage. I went down to my basement and punched at a roll of carpeting until my hands were bleeding. As I vented my unexplained frustrations, I wondered why it was that I was so angry, wondered what pushed me to act so violently. Then, like a revelation, the answer came to me, as obvious and as blinding as the sun at high noon:

I loved her.

It wasn’t a love on the same affection for a girl that will have a conversation with you, kiss you, or let you touch her boobs. I suddenly realized that I was getting angry because I really loved her, and something was getting in the way of our relationship. And that something was God. I now considered myself in direct competition with God, and I’d be damned if I was going to roll over on this one. So to sum it up: I was butting heads with God to see whose genes would be passed on.

This, of course, was the official reasoning. Upon reflection, I believe the reason Christy decided cool the physical parts down was because she wasn’t certain about the health of our relationship either. She probably felt the entire thing was being held together by hormones, and I can’t blame her.

After I came to my answer, I immediately tried calling her. The line was busy, so I raced over to her house and shuffled her up to her room. I told her the conclusion that I came to, and, fighting tears, I told her how much I loved her.

You think that it’s hard for people to change, especially two people, but overnight, the sin of doubt had been cleansed almost entirely. We started spending more time together, so much so that her mother really started to dislike me and wished I would drive into a snow bank. We became closer, more loving, and began to accept and love each other as people. And in two weeks, we were fooling around like it was the first time.

Not too long after, the idea of getting married one day started getting tossed around.

I’ll be the first to admit that it hasn’t been a perfection relationship. I doubted my love on a few occasions, after the gaiety of the revelation started to wear off (this took a few months). We’ve had a few fights, but nothing to the point where we never wanted to see each other again. We’ve had our lows, but I believe that those lows are so minor they can’t even be considered as such. Our relationship has been, in my eyes, the closest thing to perfection.

And that’s all I can say about it. That’s right, I’m not going to devote twenty thousand words to the next four years of our time together, because it is impossible for me to convey the meaning in any way that you, the reader, could appreciate it. How can I express the feeling of holding Christy close to me, the anticipation of seeing her after a long day at work, the sensation of kissing her soft, loving lips, or any other day-to-day event that makes me love her more everyday? The best I could do is to say I love her so much that I would give my own life to protect her, and I don’t even know if that does it justice.

And because of this, I asked her to marry me.

I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t propose in the most romantic way possible. While almost everyone in the world will know our anniversary as the official day, I actually popped the question about two months prior. It was without ceremony, preparation, or a ring, but it set off events that were inevitable.

The entire situation started during a rather unromantic date. We were having one of those lovers’ tiffs, the kind of mild disagreement that can escalate if it’s not dealt with in a mature, understanding way. I’ve taken a small amount of pride that Christy and I have never had a fight where we wanted to stop seeing each other or ignore the problem. I’m the sort of person who prefers to talk things out, at least in certain situations where I feel it’s important, and with Christy, it’s very important, almost to a fault.

So we were lying in my bed, having one of those discussions, talking about our feelings. In truth, I forgot what the problem was, but I do know that at its resolution, I had a renewed appreciation for how wonderful Christy is, and I just wanted to lay there with her forever. Then, as I snuggled up close, a strange urging, the kind I hadn’t felt since we first kissed, suddenly started panging, and it simply said: “Propose to her.”

For who knows how long, I was having a silent argument with myself. I remember having this inkling before, but it had always passed without a problem. Now, however, I kept telling the urge “no,” and it insisted that I propose. My argument was it wasn’t a special time of year, not Christmas, or her birthday, or our anniversary. It was just some boring day, and we just had a tiff. Besides, I didn’t have a ring, any special plans, or the means to marry her for a few more years. And yet the urge still demanded I appease it, so I decided what the hell, and held my breath.

“Christy…” I muttered, pausing for a really long time, my voice quivering “…will you marry me?”

She then kissed me on the spot. We stayed like that for a while, and the moment we were through, I told her that I would take that as a “yes.” I also made sure she knew I was serious. It was at that point the planning began. I told her that I’d get her the ring on our anniversary, and we agreed not to tell anyone about it. Actually, I asked if I could tell C, because I had told him I would talk with him before I proposed, just to get another man’s opinion before I did anything foolish. Christy ended up telling her mother, who was gracious enough not to give me the evil eye for taking steps to whisk her daughter away.

I want to make it clear that I have no regrets about the way things went. That I did it without any pretense or grandeur is romantic in its own way. While I did it based on a whim, I think it speaks volumes about our relationship. I think it says something when I could so casually make a lifelong commitment with complete confidence and not have second thoughts. Or that may be my rationalization for jumping in head first into a potentially unfilled pool, but the world will never know.

Not that I didn’t have a few plans on how to pop the question. I thought about sneaking the message into a video game I would create for the occasion, an anime’ music video, onstage while performing a cosplay, or simply written out in a draft of an article for Pocky Box.

The problem with the game idea was the time and effort it would take. I used to put together customized version of DOOM II in high school, and I was reasonably sure I remember most of the tricks. Since DOOM II was such a presence in my high school career (I literally spent all four school years on some sort of project), I thought it would be a nice nod to our beginnings. The problem was, I didn’t have a decent system that would run the software (thank you, WinTex and your Windows 95-only programming), so it would be difficult to get everything working. Plus, it would be kind of lame, since it’s hard to convey a story using purely DOOM II.

I also thought of tooling together a little role playing game using a program called RPG Maker. I had spent a month in high school learning the software and working on a game, and I figured I would know enough to make a quick run-though. This would have been a stronger possibility because of practicality, but it had little relevance, since I didn’t create anything complete using the software. Besides, Christy isn’t a gamer, so I sort of doubt she would have found the secret meaning of the game that thrilling, assuming she could get far enough.

The anime’ music video idea was pretty sound, because it would only take me a few days to put one together, and I used to create them when I started college. Inserting a quick “Will you marry me?” message at the end would be pretty simple. However, my interest began to wane simply because of the sheer number of AMVs available. It would have worked okay, but I didn’t have the attraction to pursue it.

I dismissed the idea of a cosplay proposal almost immediately. While it would have been kind of cool to propose onstage, I would be limited to doing so by what conventions Christy and my friends could attend and what conventions I could get stage time. My idea was to stop the cosplay before the conclusion and propose then and there in a surprise, impromptu interlude. I didn’t like the idea of making everyone rehearse for a performance, then changing it at the end and making the audience forget about what proceeded the proposal, thanks to the shock factor. Plus, proposing at an anime convention is pretty geeky, and since Christy isn’t into anime either, it wouldn’t be relevant to our interests as a couple. Now I’m starting to wonder what I see in her…

Kidding!

I would have done the article idea, but then I did something really stupid and proposed from the bottom of my heart. Men can be real idiots sometimes.

That doesn’t mean didn’t miss out on the sincere joy of dread, however. There was still the matter of getting the ring, and then I still had to give it to her. On the plus side, I was reasonably sure I knew what the answer was going to be, and I didn’t have to hide as much from Christy.

I started doing research on diamonds and how to get the best deal. Just because I couldn’t afford a diamond wonderful enough for Christy didn’t mean I couldn’t try to find a good one. The task was made somewhat less stressful and less expensive by the fact that Christy has small hands, which directly translates into fewer carats, which means less money.

Money wasn’t the main problem, though, but I did want to get Christy a nice diamond, so I stated doing my research. I found a good guide at Diamond Review.com, which had a lot of useful advice for clueless dolts like me. One of the most pointed tips was to take a month to three months researching and shopping for the right diamond. Considering I had less than a month, I decided I better get looking.

My mission was not necessarily the cheapest price, but the best diamond for the price. I wanted a ring that Christy would love. My travels took me to a variety of shops. Honestly, it wasn’t all that hard to narrow down, and I only had three serious contenders the entire time. I began to get a feel for what shops were good and what ones were not. The first good one was a local Oregon business called Alan Miller Jewelers. They had a bit of an edge, because buying there would help a local business, plus the owner goes to my mother’s church, and my neighbor is a jeweler there. So there was a significant level of guilt invested in this place.

The other two were national chains, Jared and Kay (which is basically the same company, but dumpier). Both were solid contenders, but the more I saw at other places, the less I was impressed, especially with Kay.

One obnoxious occurrence was the fact the prices seemed to go up and the quality seemed to go down every time I came back, but that could just be due to my increasing experience and fickleness.

Yes, I did learn quite a bit, enough to not sound like a complete moron, and just enough to call out some serious faults in the gems. I picked out faults that the jewelers never bothered to mention, and if I have any advice for you fellows on your quest for the One Ring, you’d better do your research to avoid getting your pinpointed, I2, S diamond crammed into your eye socket on the Big Day.

You would think that jewelers would be honest, professional individuals, but you would be stupid. They’re like used car salesmen, except they’re hocking a product that is functionally useless with intricate qualities you had no idea existed, and it’s all for a very emotion commitment. They are required, first and foremost, to make a sale. At any cost.

A perfect example of this stark lack of professionalism happened when I went to Rogers and Hollands Jewelers, which is located in Toledo’s Franklin Park Mall. The center of the mall plays host to four national jewelers, plus a few more that dot the mall. I had decent luck at a Kay Jewelers at a different mall, so I figured the exaggerated stories of mall price inflation had little bearing on national chains that were completing with dozens of jewelers on the outside. Yeah, right.

I was not impressed by a single jeweler in the entire mall. They either didn’t have what I wanted, were too expensive, or had employees that didn’t exactly make me want to hand over a couple of grand of my personal money. The worst of all of these was at Rogers and Hollands, which combined all of these traits into one big treasure hunt of melancholy.

The moment I stepped into the store and talked to a salesman, I was immediately hit with a story of gloom. I told him that I was only looking, and would be making a decision later. He then started blubbering about how if I do that, he wouldn’t get the sale commission, and his entire family would starve. He explained that even if I did attribute a sale to him through another salesperson, they would most likely take the commission for themselves. Really, he told me that he found his business cards thrown in the trash.

My immediate reaction was “Hey, that’s not my problem, buddy.” I told him he needed to take the issue up with management, but I was probably preaching to the choir. Instead, he confessed that he was going on vacation, and would be losing sales for a while, to which I thought “Then don’t go on vacation if you need the money, you moron!” It could have been some kind of sales ploy to get me to buy right away. If so, it was a terrible one.

I did find a somewhat interesting ring that totaled over two grand. I told the guy I had to go (I did, Christy was in the mall and didn’t appreciate how long it takes to grill these jewelers), but if I did come back (it was a slim possibility at that point, but a possibility), I would want that particular ring.

Before I could leave, a perky saleswoman appeared behind me and asked which ring I was looking at. When I pointed it out, she told me she could get a better price, and took me across the room. I immediately grimaced and refused to make eye contact with the poignant salesman, who I hoped wouldn’t start to cry when his rival took me away.

I looked over the diamond, insisting on using the hand microscope to look for flaws. If you think you, an untrained dork, would look stupid using one of these things, searching for flaws, you might be right, but it’s not really that hard, and vital. While I was doing this, the saleswoman was busy plugging numbers into a cheap calculator.

Most of the jewelers who I got to the number plugging phase with used cheap calculators, which I thought was kind of odd, since they’re dealing with thousands of dollars of merchandise. Still, a cheap calculator is just as good at adding four digits as anything else, but I guess I was expecting them to be able to afford a super computer.

Not that I honestly think they’re actually using real numbers. I believe jewelers already know the price they’re going to charge, but put on a little show to make you believe they’re finding the absolute best price for you. When she continued to provide a higher-than-two-thousand number, I expressed disappointment and, in an aggressive move, said I would walk out with the ring if she could sell it for eighteen hundred.

This prompted a series of calls to the Manager, who seemed to be in the middle of a Big Meeting, by the sounds of it, nuclear peace talks, but she would interrupt him if I was serious about buying. After a couple of calls, she finally got a hold of the Manager, who apparently didn’t like my offer, or maybe he didn’t care, because I don’t think she was talking to an actual human being. If I snatched the phone away, I’m positive I would have heard the Manager tell me the time and temperature.

While I waited for twenty minutes for the saleswoman to get in contact with the Manager, likely another sales trick to make me feel emotionally invested in the deal, I took the time to study the diamond, and spotted a huge pinpoint (black spot) right in the center. I pulled back and stared at the diamond, and I realized I could see the imperfection without help. Suddenly, I felt like eighteen hundred was a great deal. For them.

In the end, the Manager could only do a higher-than-two-thousand price. I told the saleswoman that I probably wouldn’t pay the eighteen hundred for a gem in this shape, and I was pretty disgusted with the situation, so I left. She was friendly, but I’m sure she spent the rest of the night complaining about the arrogant punk kid who had the nerve to refuse to pay thousands of dollars for a diamond with a black mark in it. She probably complained to the Manager, who sympathized by telling her that it was 6:54 PM and 42°.

I will point out that the people at Jared were very friendly and professional, and their offer was actually not bad, so they might be a good choice for these in need of a diamond and without the option of a good local jeweler.

After a few weeks and a final visit to Jared, I went back to Alan Miller, who had a ring that I had taken a fancy to, and told them that if they could match the price Jared offered (below twenty-four for a ½ carat diamond with ¼ carat ring), I would buy it now. They evened the price to twenty-four, and I told them fine, I’ll take it. A few days later, I walked out with a .52 carat diamond with a ½ carat ring that I had more confidence in.

With the diamond in hand, I was almost ready for the Big Day. I decided that Christy and I should be alone for the night (yaa), so I searched out a hotel to stay at. Thankfully, this didn’t take as long as shopping for the ring, since the price was a little lower, and I didn’t have weasel salespeople following me around. I tried to pick a local hotel, even though I did feel kind of stupid about the idea of paying to sleep in a bed located two miles from my personal room.

Since the goal was to simply find lodging, I decided to look at a little motel tucked away in Oregon’s main business district. One look at the redneck rampage of a backyard and bio-hazardous room, however, made me look elsewhere. I tried a local bed and breakfast, but they were temporarily closed because the owner was undergoing chemotherapy. Talk about timing.

I began looking at sites like Orbitz and Hotels.com for possible destinations. The national chains that were located in town cost more than I was willing to pay to sleep in a hotel located in the same city as my home. I was leaning towards a hotel located in downtown Toledo that looked kind of nice, but before I could look into it, I noticed there was a cheap Red Roof Inn on the side of town we were planning on eating at, the same side of town that had most of the video game shops I tend to stop at, plus a Best Buy. So not only could we spend an evening alone with my future wife, I got to blow money on unnecessary physical processions. Things were looking up!

So with the reservations made, the ring bought, and the plan set, I nervously awaited the Big Day.

And nervous I was. I definitely lost some sleep the night before, and I couldn’t help but refer to the hours of the day by how long I had left before the proposal. Although we were already engaged, something about the ring made the entire thing seem final. Plus, I would have to tell everyone, which I knew was going to be trouble. I was mostly worried about what my mother was going to say, since she’s not the most dynamic person in the world, and I had the notion that the shock might kill her.

The tension was relieved somewhat by C calling my office unexpectedly and asking me if I was still going through with it. We chatted for a while, whittling down the agonizing minutes, and before long, I was on my way home, and more nervous than ever. I called my mother and told her that I had something to show her regarding Christy’s brother’s wedding, which was coming up (this had no factor in my decision to propose, despite the fact her brother had only been dating his girlfriend for two years before they decided to tie the knot. I am not being jealous). This was ploy to keep her from going to bingo and missing out on being the first to know the official news.

The backlogged tension made me all nerves on my commute to Christy’s house, and waiting for her to come home from school was almost more than I could take. And when she told me she still had to pack, I almost rocked my tires our of their axis with my impatient twitching.

I explained the itinerary to Christy, who I told to pack so she could spend the night with me at my house. She was shocked that I arranged a hotel stay, and I told her that I needed to get home to get my things. This was another ploy, because I wanted to show my mother the ring. Keep in mind that I still hadn’t told Christy when she was getting the ring, but it was coming soon, and I was about ready to hyperventilate and pass out. She was suspicious that the Big Moment was coming, but I downplayed her notions and continued the drive home.

Here’s how it played out:

I pulled into my driveway and took a deep breath as I stepped out of the car. Christy was fiddling with a knotted necklace she wanted to wear that night, but I insisted we get going. As she stepped out of the car, I took notice towards the weather, which was sunny and just warm enough to be pleasant, but not too warm to make me sweat under the John Henry shirt and suit coat that I thought I looked snappy in. I briskly strode up on the porch, and Christy followed close behind. She was putting on lip balm, which wasn’t part of my Big Plan, and I waited a little bit before I proceeded.

On the same spot where we had our first kiss, I looked her in the eyes, hugged her, and told her: “Christy, you’ve really become a part of my life. And I want you to be a part of it for the rest it. Will you marry me?” I’ll tell you, it’s hard to put a ring on someone’s finger when you’re shaking so much.

I can’t explain why, but I felt the same anxiety at that time that I did six years ago, and it was a refreshing feeling. But I’ll tell you, the look on her face, the emotional way she said “yes,” and the excited way she told me she loved the ring made all of the time, expense, and stress more than worth it.

Just as we finished up, my mother opened the door, because my loyal dog, Sandy, had spotted us and felt obligated to perform her sacred dog duty of barking up a storm. I immediately recognized the irony of this, because six years ago, Sandy was raising a fuss over Christy and I being on the porch, and, to compliment an already awkward, post-kiss moment, excitedly jumped on the easy chair by the door and tipped it on me as I came in.

As my mother began to wonder what it was I needed to show her, I put my hand on her shoulder and told her that I lied to her, that what I needed to show her wasn’t about Christy’s brother’s wedding, but about mine. She was surprised, but also commented that it was about time. The next fun part was explaining that we were spending the night at a hotel for some “alone time.”

Before departing for dinner, I stopped by a friend’s house to tell him the news. He had been pestering me about my cryptic hint of a big announcement I posted on the last update, and actually guessed that I asked Christy to marry me, but I convinced him it was a joke and changed the subject. I felt I should tell him he was right, and it was a good thing I did, for more reasons than I could know.

I should point out now that the ring was too big for Christy and would have to be resized, but as luck would have it, my friend’s mother was really into jewelry, and had a slip to keep the ring on Christy’s finger. This was good, because Christy spent the next twenty-four hours looking at the ring, and as of this writing, probably is still looking at it. You think I’m joking.

The getaway was really wonderful. We had dinner at the fantastic J. Alexander’s, and, after a brief stop at a music and video store, retired to our hotel room, which could diplomatically be described as “cozy,” but hey, at least we got to stay close to each other. Soon, Christy started meddling in her favorite hobby, sleeping, and I worked on this article a little bit before waking her up and heading out to Kroger for some unnecessary midnight snacks.

The next day was devoted to some shopping, where Christy bought me anniversary presents in a vain effort to offset the weight of the ring, and we caught a movie, after which I visited my father to tell him the news and reluctantly took Christy home. It wasn’t extravagant, but really, the best things are simple. With the exception of that ring.

So now we’re officially engaged, and I couldn’t be more thrilled. Over the course of the next few years, we’ll be planning the wedding, so you can expect a lot of stories about that process. My only regret is that I will never be able to express my joy in this article, because it comes from something only Christy and I share, but I do hope all of you have the opportunity to feel something like this. I couldn’t be happier.

And Christy, I love you more than anything, and thank you for being you. And saying yes.