A Brief Engagement

Babies and dogs love me, although both tend to pee on me occasionally.

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She walked into the room and came over to me. "I have something I want to give you" she said.

I replied "You know I am already married."

With that she took a small box out of her pocket, its purpose unmistakable. From it she pulled an engagement ring, made of paper, a blue piece, as if it were a diamond, taped in the center.

"Will you marry me?" She said.

I turned to my wife who far too eagerly responded, "I will gladly give him to you."

She is but 7, and as I learned yesterday, turning a year older later this week. We have only met one of two times a year, at her grandma's house. But a couple of years back, sitting around their kitchen table, I made her (and her brother) laugh at something stupid for almost ten minutes. And that was all it took for us to become the best of friends forever.

Now, given my wife's wholehearted blessing, my intended began posing questions about the specifics of the wedding. I asked if she was going to camp next summer as we would have to plan around her other activities. 

Eventually, it was decided that the ceremony would be by a lake, and everyone would jump in after the vows were exchanged.

When I asked my old friend, her grandma, who was now scheduled to become my new grandmother-in-law, if she was paying for the nuptials, she advised in no uncertain terms that this was a responsibility that her daughter, my future mother in law, would have to undertake. 

After a few minutes of imagining, the conversation turned to more immediate and concrete concerns, like my still married spouse and me walking home before it got dark. And thus ended consideration of a most unique topic.

 

Or so I thought.

"I don't think I want to get married." Less than 24 hours after she had proposed, the idea of spending her life with me had obviously become too much to take. "I think we should just be very good friends." Even at 7 years old, she was perceptive enough to realize that I was not worth the effort. And I don't think she had even received a briefing from my wife as to what it was like to be married to me.

I soon broke the bad news to my long suffering spouse. I could tell how disappointed she was, instantly recognizing that she would thus be saddled with me for the indefinite future. She had seen the light at the tunnel's end. But now it had been extinguished.

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