Our wedding anniversary is coming up very soon. Not that Jodi would know. She doesn’t do dates, or really numbers of any kind. I’m not kidding. She has no idea when our anniversary is. I didn’t really know this about her when we got married. It just kind of turned out to be an extra bonus.
I’m telling you, whatever part of the brain that is supposed to store numbers (the Gublianna Oblangata Evangelista, or whatever), she has instead crammed information about Hermès scarf patterns. No numbers, just scarf patterns.
Every once in a while she’ll go, “How old am I again?”
(Sigh, pause) “89.”
“I am not. How old am I really?”
“You’re 51.”
“I am?…. I thought I was 46.”
“Nope.”
“How old are you?”
“53.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I have a calculator on my phone and everything.”
“Oh………. I thought I was 62.”
“You’re 51.”
“What year was I born?”
“God almighty.”
So yeah, she won’t know that our anniversary came and went until I tell her one day, “You know, our anniversary was last month.”
And she’ll go, “Oh really? That’s nice.”
It’s awesome. No expectation for any gifts or any other hoo ha. In the early years of our marriage, we would buy each other gifts (when I reminded her), but then we just stopped after awhile. It seemed silly. If we ever want something, whatever day of the year it is, we just buy it now. And if we want to do something for the other person, we just do it. The idea is that you treat each other with love and respect each day of the year, not just on one particular day.
We’re just kind of made for each other that way. When I asked her to marry me, there wasn’t any big production or fireworks display. She even kind of knew it was going to happen. We had just been talking about it a lot. We went on a date to a nice restaurant in Dana Point, California. And in the parking lot, it went kind of like this:
“Hey.”
“W’sup?”
“Gotcha a ring.”
“Yeah.”
“Can I have it?”
“Sure, here you go.”
“Shiny.”
“Yeah. Shiny.”
“Cool.”
“I know.”
“I heard it’s going to rain on Tuesday.”
“Yep….. I like turtles.”
“Nice.”
“Can we eat now?”
“K.”
Alright, I’m exaggerating just a little bit. We didn’t cover the weather or turtles, and Jodi did squeal a good little bit when she saw the ring. I had gone to Tiffany (the jewelry store, not the ginger pop star from the 80s) and bought the engagement ring. I knew she loved Tiffany, and I wanted her to have what she wanted, even though I really didn’t have any money and knew it would put us further in debt for awhile. But that was okay.
That’s us. It was simple, no frills. And we were both really happy.
But I know a lot of people like to do these big, planned, over-the-top proposals. And I’m glad those people exist. The proposal below is something I first saw a few years ago, and I thought it was the best marriage proposal ever. (And here you thought all along that I was saying that my proposal was the best. No. Mine is somewhere down around the bottom.)
This proposal happened in Portland, Oregon, which is exactly the kind of place where you can do this kind of thing. Portland is just different. The people are different. In a good way. I love Portland.
I do know that if I were to show this video to Jodi, she would go, “Oh, that is really funny.” Then she would pause and say, “I’m glad you didn’t do that when we got engaged.”
And I would say the same thing. I mean, doing something like this? I’d have to, like, call people and stuff. It would be exhausting. And Southern California is not Portland. I’d have to tell everyone, “Ok. Make sure you leave 5 hours early to beat the traffic. And take the 60 to the 57 to the 5. Don’t get on the 91 or you’ll get lost on the 22 and then before you know it you’ll be on the 405 and we’ll never see you again.”
Plus, you’re never going to find a cute little neighborhood like this, with no traffic on tree-lined streets. It doesn’t exist in Southern California. People in cars would be yelling and honking at you to get out of the way, and other people on the side of the road would be trying to sell you oranges. It would be a complete nightmare.
But not in Portland. And not with people like this.
Behold, I present, the best marriage proposal ever. I hope it makes you smile like it made me smile…