On a Bended, Bruised, Battered, and Broken Knee

(or How Not to Not Propose Marriage to My Daughter)

Jeff Bogle

JEFF, 52

JEFF is the father of two girls in their early 20s. He is speaking to a boy in the foyer of his house, a nonroom of constant flux, while one of his daughter is upstairs getting changed (again).

JEFF Listen, while she’s upstairs changing clothes again. We have some time to talk. . . . Future son-in-law, I need to save you from yourself. Listen up . . .

It may surprise you that for many women, still, to this day, regardless of the strides made in equality and the women’s liberation movement as first spearheaded by the tireless singsong efforts of a sashed Mrs. Banks in Mary Poppins’s England, the idea of being proposed to, by a man and on bended knee, remains one of life’s most eagerly awaited occasions.

How will he do it? When will he do it? Where will he do it?

The Hollywood rom-com industry is built, in part, upon these eternal questions. Cast Patrick Dempsey in the lead, and shazam! Another summer blockbuster tailor-made for girls’ night out. Who’s bringing the wine?

You should know that there’s nothing else in the world that blends, so seamlessly, both the commonplace and the cinematic quite like the wedding proposal. You can probably already picture it: handsome and earnest you, on single knee, her hand in yours, your eyes to the heavens, the sun setting behind her back, her face as a silhouette, her mouth agasp.

Your parochial wonder in that exact moment of bliss is only found in a boy whose heart is free of emotional shrapnel.

People once got excited about going to war, too.

And I get it, I do, that instant when boy asks girl and girl says yes is a time and a place that will be filed away in a woman’s own personal Library of Congress, archived away with her first kiss, first baseball game with dad, first pint of ice-cream after that first bad breakup, first nonfaked orgasm. This all means that you should try really extra-super-duper-hard not to screw it up. Because shit memories are cataloged too, and a misstep on the marriage proposal tip will haunt you ’til the end of days.

Trust me.

My old girl and I worked at the same financial services company throughout much of the opening salvo of our relationship. Ours was a classic story: we were young, we were in love, we were cash poor, and we were bank tellers surrounded by twenty-dollar bills. We were the most boring adaption of Bonnie and Clyde ever conceived. We’d met at that bank on the corner of Second and South Street in Philadelphia, the exact spot of which, I should tell you now, is a toilet inside an organic ice-cream joint, a fact that I swear is a metaphor for exactly nothing. While we first conjugated our love in the land of cheesesteaks and soft pretzels, we quickly followed each other out to the ’burbs for a fresher start and for fatter paychecks. After the first couple of weeks of being together, it was a foregone conclusion we’d someday tie the knot. But I was never a Boy Scout—I couldn’t tie shit together properly. When it came time to eventually get married, after we’d eradicated our baggage, like her ex-boyfriend who was still living in her parent’s house and my credit card debt, which played the role of my ex-boyfriend, I had to propose. I guessed. I was never any good at kindergarten sequencing. She was, she was better, and she assured me that yes, the proposal picture comes first. We had a date and location picked out but we weren’t technically, in the eyes of the law or prim and proper society or her family and friends or not even me, engaged to be wed.

Thankfully, I had a plan, the perfect plan. Airtight.

I’d whisk her away to Detroit (seriously) and I’d get down on bended knee and officially ask her to be my wife on the steps of Joe Louis Arena, the home of my beloved Red Wings Hockey Club (seriously). Because, I figured, if I had to do it, I would insert a bit of my own fantasy into the situation. That seemed only fair, by WWPDD Law; that is exactly what Patrick Dempsey would do, too. I mean, yes, he would probably gallop down Steve Yzerman Drive on a horse, but still, close enough.

Conveniently enough, I was already scheduled to travel to Detroit for business reasons, and my girl, she was going to be my companion during the trip. With my own airfare, hotel, and car rental covered by the company we worked for, all we needed to do was splurge on a flight for her and tickets to a Red Wings game, both of which were booked solid. Like I said, airtight.

With that locked down, it was time to lock down my fiancé. Not literally, of course. She wasn’t into that. Still isn’t, despite my assertions that I will not lose the keys. But a funny thing happened on the way to the arena. My brilliant fallen-American-city-hockey-stadium-wedding-proposal scheme? Yeah, it didn’t quite come off. What did happen was this:

The client canceled the trip. No one was going to Detroit. Most people would be high-fiving about missing a trip to that depressing, crumbling-even-then American city. Me? Not so much. I was catatonic. When we met for lunch later that day in the company’s airplane hanger–sized cafeteria, I was despondent. She couldn’t understand why, obviously—she wasn’t hip to what I had in store for her and she wouldn’t quit asking why this was bothering me so much. Yeah, we’d miss a hockey game, she said. We’ll catch one later down the line, she said. No biggie, she said. To her it seemed I was code red over missing a stupid regular season hockey game. Which, had that been all we’d be missing out on, would have been idiot, yes. But you know now what she didn’t then, that this was way more than a hockey game. What was more idiotic than my psychotic behavior was what I finally said to her. Yeah. No kidding.

In a moment I will never live down, in a moment stored away until the end of days, a moment I’d like you to try hard to imagine so as not to make the same mistake I did, I told her that I was going to propose to her. In Detroit. At the Red Wings game. Oh but I didn’t just tell her, oh no, I yelled it at her, in the middle of our company’s cafeteria, in the middle of lunchtime, as if she was to blame for the client putting the kibosh on my master plan.

Of the many sentences a man can mutter aloud to a woman he loves with a mouth full of turkey club sandwich, “I was GOING TO propose to you” is, without a doubt, the dumbest.

And that, son, is how not to propose marriage to the woman you love.

So, you best get it together, Junior, and rent the entire Patrick Dempsey oeuvre, stat. Come to think of it, now might be the ideal time to learn how to saddle up a horse, too. You’ve gotta give my daughter the fairytale proposal scene she deserves . . . otherwise, she’ll archive away your stupidity and make you wear it like a sash for the rest of your life.

Twinsies!