Ruminations of an Old Goat

I originally wrote this in May of 2008 as an entry for the first "What I did on my summer vacation" Friday Challenge. It seems appropriate to run it again on the day after Valentine's Day. For those who remember reading this two years ago, I have added some new stuff.

In the fall of 1978 I was working as a pizza delivery guy while taking a semester off from college. While taking a pizza to one of the women's dorms, always a favorite destination, I just happened to look up. I don't know why, but I did. Right into the eyes of a pretty, blonde coed who was sitting in the window of her dorm room studying. She smiled at me and waved. I smiled and waved back, all the while thinking, "She seems nice. It's a pity I'll never meet her." I don't know why this scene stuck with me. After all, I delivered pizza to at least a dozen different pretty coeds every day. I didn't remember them beyond the end of the day. But I remembered every second of my brief encounter with the woman in the window.

A few months later, on March 10, 1979, I met Audrey. I was in my fourth year in college (because I was a lazy, class dropping bum I can’t call it my senior year in college) and Audrey was a freshman. We met at a cast party for a one act play. I had been in the play, Audrey knew other people who had been in the play.

I've always been a romantic who believed in love at first sight. When I saw Audrey – tall, slender, blonde with green, intelligent eyes – I had proof it existed. I knew I had to meet her. Had to. Unable to arrange an introduction (I didn’t know who she knew from the cast), I decided to take matters into my own hands.

“Do you mind if I try to pick you up?” I asked.

Yes, I really asked that. It did have the advantage that it was direct. Perhaps it also helped that Audrey thought I was at least halfway drunk at the time. Don’t knock it, though. It worked.

“You can try,” she said.

We spent the rest of the party together. Except for the day after the party, we saw each other every day for the next couple of weeks. Thirteen days after we met, I asked her to marry me. I would have asked earlier but I didn’t want to rush things. She said yes.

The next day, we told some of our closest friends. Their reactions were all strangely similar.

“Holy shit!” they all said. Sometimes following that up with, “You’re kidding, right?”

Given our friends’ reactions to our announcement, we decide to wait a while before telling our parents. Like until summer break. That’s when we’d tell my parents and I would ask Audrey’s father for permission to marry his youngest daughter. You see, in the euphoria after Audrey agreed to marry me, I offered to ask her father for her hand in marriage. It appealed to Audrey’s sense of the romantic. She agreed. I was stuck.

About a month later, Audrey and I were in her dorm room studying. Really, I swear! Audrey grabbed her notes, sat in the window and started studying. I just stared. Because she sat in the window. And was blonde. And her dorm room was in the location to be the pretty girl in the window I could never forget. Not only had I managed to meet the woman I never thought I would ever meet, I was engaged to marry her!

Summer break came and, along with it, the time to spring the news of our engagement to our parents. Telling my parents was a snap. They took the two of us out to dinner one night and, as we were sitting down, I just told them. It was amazingly easy and they thought it was wonderful news.

Audrey’s father, though, was a different matter all together. Now I know he’s an introvert. Then I thought he was silently sizing me up to see if I was good enough for his daughter. He seemed the type who might have a loaded shotgun stashed somewhere nearby, just in case a potential suitor needed to be taught some manners. He already turned the hose on one future son-in-law who would end up marrying his oldest daughter. What would he do to the guy who wanted to marry the baby of the family?

I’d say I was nervous when Audrey and I arrived at her house for dinner with her parents, but I’d be lying. I was flat out terrified. Her mother’s always effusive welcome did nothing to put my mind at ease. Audrey saw me seated in the living room with her father then abandoned me. To hear her tell it, she simply went to help her mother prepare dinner.

So, there I was. In the living room. With Audrey’s father. Who was generally not paying any attention to me. And I was supposed to ask for his daughter’s hand in marriage. I looked toward the kitchen, the bright, cheery, safe kitchen. Where the woman I loved was setting the table for dinner.

So, I sucked it up.

“Mr. Brandt?” I asked. I had just turned 22, well past puberty, but was pleased my voice didn’t break.

“Hm?” he responded.

“I’d… like your permission to marry Audrey,” I rushed it out.

He looked at me. Just looked at me. I’m pretty sure I had turned 23 by the time he finally spoke.

“I think you ought to finish college first,” he said.

I didn’t even stop to wonder whether his answer meant yes or no, just blurted out, “Oh, that’s our plan! We aren’t planning on getting married this summer or anything.”

He just nodded. Then Audrey’s mother called us into dinner.

Through out dinner, nothing was said of my short discussion with Audrey’s father. Audrey’s father was quiet. But then he always was. Audrey kept giving me sidelong glances as if asking, “Well, did you do it?” Audrey’s mother was the only one who was oblivious to the undertone.

After dinner, when we were backing out of the driveway, Audrey said, “I thought you were going to ask Dad tonight.”

“I did,” I said. “He didn’t say no, at least.”

At that very same instant, inside the house, Audrey’s father turned to her mother and said, “Well, I got a surprise just before dinner.”

It's been 31 years since I asked the father of the girl in the window for her hand in marriage. This October will mark the 29th year of that marriage.

I've never regretted a single minute of any of those years.