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| Tuesday, May 21, 2013 |
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I’m betting that Paul Dunn wishes he had known this trick. |
I bear my testimony that the Mormon blog Banner of Heaven is true — I know it with every fiber of my being. |
This is also true of the “how we met” story … it’s simply not very exciting to say “we met in a Mormon singles ward in Orem, Utah” … |
Tagore, My engagement story spans the globe, with key players in several time zones and a war zone. Other compelling elements were an untrendy diamond ring, genetically-modified roses, perfectly-timed deliveries of unmarked packages, an oddly-timed viewing of Terminator 3, and tears. Many, many tears. |
DKL is a pompous ass. That has nothing to do with this thread, and probably isn’t even true, but I thought he would enjoy my dropping by with this comment. Tag, DKL, you’re it! |
Ellsworth, Daaaaamn! That sounds like the makings a Bruckheimer movie. Was there any point where you were walking in slow motion with a group of guys in flight gear? Or a timer of some sort ticking down to a catastrophic event? Can’t have a Bruckheimer movie without those elements. |
Yes, it was very much like a Bruckheimer. I did walk in slow motion in body armor to my blackhawk, and there were many instances where there were red LCD clocks ticking down to the moment of misson failure. |
Dan, did you get to use the word “baksheesh” (Arabic word for bribe) in any of this? I think Baksheesh would be a great name for the movie. |
Baksheesh al hobi fi al mataar al Saddam, “My love bribe in Saddam’s Airport.” |
Ardis: DKL is a pompous ass. I don’t need that from you. I get enough of that from my bishop! |
Has the mrs. signed on to the tale, or does she contradict you at parties where this comes up? |
I was also unaware that I would have to recount our engagement story over and over. Unfortunately I also have a reputation as being a little eccentric, so people are really expecting something when they ask me for an engagement story. So I have spun my experience as an extremely lame engagement story and it makes a moderately good story. It involves a quiet park (the part I wouldn’t change) a can of olives, two Subway sandwiches, me so nervous I almost puked, and the movie Independence Day. Why didn’t I know that people would care about that stuff? |
This is just a guess here but… because you’re male? *grinning and ducking* My engagement story involves a horsedrawn carriage ride around Victoria B.C. with hot chocolate (as it was February), a bunch of red roses and the engagement ring on the stem of the single white rose. So I won’t say that all men are hopeless; it’s just that they’re statistically more likely to be hopeless. ;) On a more serious note, I suspect that male behavior is a strong factor in engagement stories. Guys don’t share the stories of their lives in the same way that women tend to and so how the story will sound later doesn’t really factor in when they think of proposing. |
If you have to embellish to make you life sound more exciting to others maybe it is time to take a little inventory and see if maybe it isn’t time to take on some new challenges. |
MAC (14), I know you found my story exciting, but I swear, not a single aspect of my story was embellished. |
Never let the truth get in the way of a good story. |
Kevin: The Mrs. has not signed on. When she tries to correct me, I just tell everyone she’s lying. MAC (14): In this context, wouldn’t your suggestion be an argument in favor of practicing plural marriage? |
I like to take the hum-drum of our how we met story and make the mere ordinariness of it seem entertaining by quickly mentioning in succession all the elements that are so stereo-typical: BYU – student – ward – FHE – I – was – dating – his – roommate – he – was – an – rm – teaching – GD – class – of – freshman – girls – my – roommates – fixed – us – up. |
Yeah, MAC. From the tone of your post, it sounds like you probably have a pretty amazing engagement story, perhaps involving ninjas or couscous or Democrats. Care to share? The podium is yours. |
claire, did you proceed to Wymount from there? I think that would rock our world to hear. |
What ever happened to the gracious understatement? The need to embellish is just lame. Is the palette of your life that monochrome? |
MAC, Personally, I’m from Southern California, the land of Jim Rome and Alec Baldwin, where hyperbole rules the day in our manner of speaking. |
MAC: When I was nine years old, I was walking home from the movies with my parents one night. It was late October, and there was an ominous, orange-colored full moon overhead. We were walking by an old, abandoned warehouse, when suddenly, a gracious understatement jumped out of the shadows, stabbed my parents with a large butcher knife, and ran off cackling wildly. I’ll never forget that night. |
Likewise, when I was young, my village was burned and plundered by a band of mad, raving gracious understatements, and I alone was left alive to rebuild my village using bamboo, beetle carcasses, and snot. That, my friend, is why I steer clear of gracious understatements. |
Tagore, You have not given us many details of your actual, non-embellished engagement. But may I pry for one detail? Did your engagement picture feature you and your future wife wearing matching denim jeans with white button-down shirts? |
A gracious understatement evicted my entire family from our hole-in-the-ground and we had to go live in the lake. |
I just want to point out for the record that I don’t embellish the stories I tell about my life. My wife would never countenance my embellishing anything — she even gets after me when she feels like I haven’t understated things enough. Plus, I have several long-term friends who would lose all respect for me if they ever heard me embellish any of the stories that they were around to witness. I actually do think that it’s dishonest and untruthful of Leno to tell a fake story about himself in a book that he passes off as autobiographical. I mean, if his intent is to entertain, then he’d do much better to provide a book of short stories with himself as the protagonist and the express disclaimer that they may or may not be true. Perhaps the reason he sold it as an autobiography was because he thought that it would sell better that way — hardly something that is justified by the goal to entertain. |
I am a fiction writer. I am allowed to embellish anything. So there I was, sitting in my literary criticism class learning all about the vital contributions of Plotinus to the world, when suddenly my professor looks at me and starts talking about how earthly realities are emanations of eternal ideals. It’s like I’m the only one he’s talking to. He says, “For example, when I look at Margaret, I know that what I’m seeing is not truly real. I see her and I go weak in the knees. You may have suspected from that day I fell down while talking about the Aristotelean unities–which are so sexy, aren’t they? Now, I know that BYU professors are not supposed to even think about these things. We need to maintain a distance, which I do with the rest of you. Then again, you’re not really that attractive, are you. (Well, maybe you are, Joanne, but you’re married.) So because of Plotinus, I have to consider that if Margaret is this beautiful in my classroom, how beautiful is she in the eternal reality, of which I can see merely an emanation? When I think of this and the dialectic it implies, oh my gosh, my gosh, my golly gosh. Thesis, antithesis–Margaret, marry me. Class dismissed for everyone else. Please leave quickly. We have negotiations here.” So we negotiated. I asked if he thought he was bald in the eternal sense, or if his baldness was merely a weak realization of an eternal and more lovely truth. He said his truer self was probably not bald, and anyway it could be overcome. (I think there was a mention of Rogaine.) I said, “So would I get an A?” He said, “That would look bad. Would you be content with an A-?” “Free tuition?” “Yes.” “How many children will be required?” “Five or six.” “How about four?” “Okay. Four. Could they at least be hyperactive so it’ll feel like there are five or six of them?” “All right. Hyperactivity sounds fun. Do I still have to take the final?” “Do you want to?” “Yes. Desperately.” “Then yes. Yes, take the final. Will you marry me?” “Sure. This should be fun.” “Well, it won’t seem as fun as it will REALLY be, but the fun will be an emanation of an eternal fun which we won’t even comprehend until we’re in a better world.” “And will we always talk this way?” “Even deeper. And we’ll use more contemporary material.” “Allrighty then. Do you like the Beatles?” “I have every album they ever made.” “Can I have them?” “Yes. Oh yes. And someday, I’ll give you Clapton–or at least his musical radiations.” “That seals it, then. We’re engaged. See you next class.” So that’s my engagement story. |
The Beatles and Clapton. That’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard. |
Margaret, All I can say is, I really wish I knew the things that you know. Reading that, I was very much caught up in the story, but I also felt like I should go back to school or something. |
Dan–are you accusing me of embellishing my engagement story? I can prove it’s true. Look up BYU’s records of Bruce’s 1884 fall semester classes. I was there and I got an A-, and I married him the next May. Thus it is proved. (We didn’t date until after grades came out, however.) |
Margaret: 1884? |
If I said 1884, it must be true. Why would I lie about that? And THAT explains why I have such a hard time remembering Plotinus. It’s been SO many years. I do recall that he was a stubborn man. Bald and rather splotchy around the nose. Very sweet and idealistic, though. Kept falling in love with shadows and prisms and absurdly beautiful women whose feet never touched the ground. |
Margaret, you’re cracking me up. I think the pressure of high entertainment engagement stories is a direct result of bizarre dating rituals. Dan, Blackhawks. Hardcore. My brothers fly Blackhawks (one formerly). Small world. Unless the Blackhawk part wasn’t true. Then I just got caught up in the story… |
Back when DH and I got engaged, it was edgy and dangerous to have met on the internet. Now, it’s boring. So I don’t have a cool engagement/how we met story. |
I actually do think that it’s dishonest and untruthful of Leno to tell a fake story about himself in a book that he passes off as autobiographical. I mean, if his intent is to entertain, then he’d do much better to provide a book of short stories with himself as the protagonist and the express disclaimer that they may or may not be true. Perhaps the reason he sold it as an autobiography was because he thought that it would sell better that way — hardly something that is justified by the goal to entertain. |
My wife gave me till the end of February to propose (this was sometime in November). She felt she needed that much time to plan the wedding. So I proposed in February. And I forgot to bring the ring with me. |
Lupita, Yes, the blackhawks were real, as was everything else I’ve mentioned except the attack on my village by the gracious understatements. I always wanted a really cool, classic engagement like Proud Daughter of Eve (13), but instead I ended up living a Bruckheimer flick. If you add the drama and angst of our 1st Presidency petition, then it becomes a Bruckheimer/Dutcher flick. Is that even possible? Margaret, the fact that you actually lived your creative writing is pretty amazing. I wonder if the RMs in your ward were angry at Bruce for “poaching” in their territory. Tagore, the image of the gracious understatement cackling away into the night kept me tossing and turning in fitful sleep last night. |
I met a couple from Iran and saw them several times over a couple of months. Once talking to the husband alone, I made some comment about his wife. He looked across to her with a dreamy expression on his face. “We’re cousins, you know. We’ve known one another since we were little children.” |
Not surprising- in neighboring Iraq, almost half the of marriages are to first or second cousins. |
No one believes my engagement story when it comes up. I don’t see why it’s so important to have gone on a date before you ask someone to marry you. We went on one before we actually got married, so it’s not like we didn’t date ever. I’m just glad the cop didn’t want the hassle of all the paperwork that night. It rarely ever comes up, though. |
I got engaged at a KFC and married a week later. |
Ann (35): You raise a fascinating dimension to all of this. How well does an engagement story hold up over time? For example, Ellsworth’s (4) Bruckheimer/Dutcher engagement story is pretty amazing now, but who knows? Maybe in 20 years proposals involving Blackhawks, war zones, genetically modified roses, Terminator 3, and double-proxy civil cermonies in Montana will be commonplace. There’s just no way to know, I guess. Margaret: I haven’t done the research yet, but I’m pretty confident that there’s a strong, positive correlation between proposals involving the Beatles and marital success. Ellsworth (38): Everyone waking up to Here Comes the Sun would go a long way toward creating world peace. Brilliant idea. |
Bill has never taken off his wedding ring, except maybe for a couple of surgeries. He’s gained some 70 lbs since we got married and sometimes I worry that we’ll have to cut his finger off if it ever gets caught. Our rings were fairly cheap, we bought them at a florist. I don’t recall the circumstances. Now I have a small diamond eternity ring which he gave me for our anniversary. It’s light and thin which I like. I, like many of you, don’t like jewelry of any kind. I tricked Bill into proposing, but then I was surprised that he actually did it. I never thought he really wanted to marry me until last March. That was our 25th anniversary. Maybe by our 50th, I’ll be convinced he was sincere. |
Wow, Annegb–last March sounds like it was quite a month. I said, “I know. Oh, you mean you want to get engaged now?” “Yes, that’s what I mean.” So romantic. The first year was Hell, but in 20+ years, Bruce and I have settled into each other in a beautiful way. In many respects, we’re an unlikely couple. But it works. For whatever reason, it works. |
>> I tricked Bill into proposing … I want to hear the rest of this story. Please feel free to embellish. |
When did the Republican party become true? |
HFN: Well, that’s something you have to pray about to know for yourself, but I think official Church policy puts the date at January 20, 1981. |
Tagore, |
I’m not keen on the buying an experience issue. I would think that would loss him a bit of respect with some people? But I doubt many really know the truth. |
