The biggest surprise of my Life, Pt. 1

I’m a really big fan of surprises. In fact, I just might like surprises more than anyone else you know.

One time my sister drew my name for Christmas, and a few weeks before the Big Day I spotted some pink furry slippers in a bag on her bed. I knew they were for me; I was (literally) sick about seeing them for the next three weeks. Oh the remorse.
Christmas morning came, and it turned out, they weren’t even for me.

Many times growing up I told family members and friends that I DID NOT want to pick out my engagement ring. How fun is that??? There’s no surprise! If you’ve picked out a ring, how can your man surprise you with a proposal of marriage? “Um, remember that ring I picked out? So when you gonna give it to me? Maybe tonight since we're at a really fancy restaurant?” So unromantic, I’d say.
I blame my lifelong obsession with the romantic on Anne of Green Gables.

Eight months ago, I was eating lunch with some former roommates at California Pizza Kitchen and fawning over Bonnie’s recently-acquired engagement ring. It was beautiful and really unique; none of us had seen anything like it before. Of course, we discussed the topic of engagement.
Slice and I had been dating for a little over a month, which at BYU means that our apt. whiteboard had displayed my roommates’ guesses for wedding dates for at least three weeks. (They thought I didn’t know what those were, punks.) But we hadn’t talked about Marriage yet…hadn’t even mentioned it once. This provided my brothers with constant entertainment.
Brother calls: “So, how are things going? Have you talked about the M word yet?”
Me: “No. Thanks for asking.”
B: “Why not?”
Me: “I AM NOT GOING TO BRING IT UP.”
Repeat every day for two weeks. They never even called me before I was dating someone, sheesh.

Anyway, we sat talking about engagement and rings and such, and I related a funny story about how some Union high-schoolers had thought Slice would be proposing to me soon. I dismissed the possibility because – as I reminded them – we had not talked about Marriage yet.
Roommate: "I thought you wanted it to be a surprise when you got engaged.”
Me: “Well, yeah, I have always said that I didn’t want to pick out my ring or really talk about marriage beforehand….but, uh, now I’m starting to think that was dumb. Especially the talking about marriage part.”
Roommate: unusually quiet

The next day, Sunday, I had a similar conversation with my mother before getting out of bed for the day.
“Mom, I don’t know what to do. I need to make plans for this summer and fall [MY LIFE], and we haven’t talked about marriage, I’m not going to bring up, but I don’t know what’s going on!”
Mom: “Hon, what if he did propose to you, soon? Do you want to marry him?” (She was not the first to ask me this question.)
Me: “I don’t know, mom…..I just don’t know.”
Mom: “Well, that’s probably something you should figure out soon, isn’t it?”
Me: “Yeah. Probably.”