The Story

I should have known something was up.

About 3 1/2 weeks ago I came home from hangin' with my mom to find Scientist cleaning the refrigerator like a man possessed. Now, Scientist isn't a slob, or even a sloppy guy, but, like me, he's not one to take on big projects like cleaning the fridge for no reason. Especially on a really beautiful day. But he was, and figuring I should help, I decided to pitch in.

After we had finished, we started preparing some dinner. Since what we were making required us to marinate the meat for awhile, we decided to go for a walk at Kent Park, a park we started frequenting right after we met. It had just rained, so we figured there would be less people out there than usual.

Seeing as how I was totally stinky, I changed into something clean. Scientist did as well, changing into a nice clean navy shirt and some new shorts. I thought this was a little strange, as we were going to be gone for just a little while, but figured we had been cleaning, so he probably felt grungy or something and wanted to get into new clothes. He grabbed the camera and we headed out to the car.

Then, just as we were about to leave, Scientist said he needed to go get a CD, jumped out of the car and ran inside. When he came back, however, his hands were empty. He made some excuse about how the CD he was going to get was a "good" CD, as opposed to a burned one, and he didn't want to ruin it by putting it into the car stereo (for some reason, the car stereo eats CDs, so we try to only put burned ones in it, lest we lose it forever to the car stereo gremlin living there). I shrugged. Then, finally, we were off.

Once we got to Kent Park we started on our stroll. It had rained earlier, but the sun had come back out and it was late enough in the day that it wasn't humid and sticky, but rather pleasant.

Kent Park is unusual in the number of bridges it has. It has a lake where people fish, along with a beach and 4 or 5 bridges that surround the perimeter. There are always a lot of families with little kids running everywhere. It's very Midwestern.

At one point we stopped on one of the bridges and started doing cute couple stuff like making out and gazing into each other's eyes. After a minute though, Scientist said we should continue on to "our bridge". Like I said earlier, soon after we started dating we would go to Kent Park to relax and be together. The first time we ever went to Kent Park we took a bunch of pictures on this one bridge; this bridge, of course, gained some sentimental significance to both of us as our relationship progressed, and we considered it "ours". Disgustingly cute, I know.

But as we got closer to the bridge, we noticed it was occupied by three people with fishing poles and an extremely excited dog. When I pointed them out to Scientist he snapped his fingers and exclaimed "DAMN IT!" with far more annoyance than necessary. I was kind of surprised at his reaction, but he seemed to get a hold of himself and said something about how we could just stop on the bridge we were on.

That was when Scientist started in telling how much he loved and cared about me. Then he broke away and asked me to come stand away from the side of the bridge. I was a little confused by the way he was acting at this point, but followed him anyway away from the water.

That was when he pulled out a ring and asked me to marry him. After I had recovered from the shock of what he had just asked me, I told him yes.

We had talked about getting married for a quite awhile, but I had figured we wouldn't get engaged for at least another year, what with all the stuff that's been happening lately (my grandmother's death, his thesis, being unsure where we're moving to in the next few weeks, our impending homeless beginning on July 31st). He had gotten the ring on Monday and had been hiding it in various places, like the toolbox in the car and in his backpack, all week trying to figure out when the best time was to ask me. After he explained it to me it all made sense: him changing clothes, grabbing the camera, getting excited about people being on our bridge, etc. He had wanted me to stand away from the water because he didn't want to drop the ring in the water out of nervousness.

I'm extremely happy. We both are. The wedding should be sometime next year, probably in August.

And that is the story of how I got engaged.