I agreed to marry a chicken (or, how we got engaged)

I recently completed one of Frugal Portland’s amazing “Get To Know Another Blogger” interviews, and, in my interview, she asked both how my husband and I met and our proposal story. Due to some of the language used, and the sheer length of the story, I gave an abridged version for the interview. Below is the complete, unedited version. 

How we met

This is the boring part. We met in one of our college classes–Great Crimes, taught by Dr. John Kelly. The man was obsessed, and I mean OBSESSED, with the JFK assassination. But that point is irrelevant.

Dr. Kelly, for reasons that we still don’t understand, sat us in alphabetical order. As a result, one of my roommates sat directly next to my husband and one of our good friends/fifth roommate sat directly behind him. Since they are both extremely outgoing, they struck up a conversation with him and me, being of the beginning of the alphabet sect and designated to what was clearly the uncool part of the lecture hall, could only wave from afar.

At the end of class, we all talked some more and found out that we all lived in the same dorm. Friendships ensued, we worked on our captions (read: Dr. Kelly’s unnecessary busy work that he made us do because he was too busy mulling over the single bullet theory), I brought the husband as a date to my sorority hayride and now, almost 17 years later, we are still together.

Oh, I should also say that at the time, the husband’s mother worked in a perfume outlet. She would buy him all kinds of colognes and he actually wore them (a practice he has abandoned). He usually smelled good, too, which is why we called him “Smelly Boy”. Friend who sat behind him, Steph (who has a blog that you should read), would do random and periodic smell checks and then give a signal to me if he smelled good that do or no.

Our proposal story: The discussion

My husband and I moved in together in June 2000. This was more of a business arrangement than anything else (my roommate had gotten pregnant and graduated early; he graduated and could no longer live in his fraternity house. I had an empty room, he needed a place to live, the apartment was cheap and thus, our cohabitation begins).

Fast forward to 3 years later. At this point, we’ve been together for 7 years and living together for 3 of those. We’re 25 and really, I wanted to know if things were ever going to move beyond where we were. So I broached the subject and what started as a rational, calm discussion devolved into major amounts of yelling and me shouting “And it’s probably never going to happen because you’re too much of a pussy to ask!!!”

Maybe I was angry and irrational.But he was refusing to answer definitively and I really wanted to know if, at any point in time, we were going to get engaged. Because after 7 years, I felt I had the right to know if it was even a remote possibility.

After a stunned silence, he responded with “Yes. By the end of the year (this was in October). I promise”.

An answer! A definitive answer! I was elated! But then

Our proposal story: New Year’s Eve 2002

So, about 2 months have gone by since our initial discussion and it’s New Year’s Eve and we’re still not engaged. I’m thinking it’s on purpose because surely he’s going to do it that night. He makes plans for us to go to some comedy show/dinner thing (which was a big deal for us because we had very little money at this point) and although he’s mildly obsessed with whether or not I was going to the gym that day, I dismiss it as him 1) just being annoying and 2) being nervous because he’s going to propose and who wouldn’t be nervous? (For the record, I did not, in fact, go to the gym that day.) 

Anyway, the day rolls on. We get dressed, we go the New Year’s event, we come home and…nothing. No proposal. No nothing. I let it go because we had had a good time and I was sort of drunk and didn’t want to start a fight.

I saved that for the next day.

Our proposal story: New Year’s Day 2003

We wake up from our New Year’s festivities around 11 or so and we are both hungry. Hangry, in fact. So we decide to order some Chinese takeout from a place a few minutes from our apartment. We call it in and, me being me and particularly irrational when I’m hangry, decide that I would use this time to find out why he backed out of his promise. Because you don’t promise something like that and then not come through.

So maybe I yelled that at him. And maybe he yelled back at me that I need to relax and just let him happen when he’s ready. And maybe that made things worse.

Now, in the middle of all of this, we both remembered that we had ordered food and one of us had to go pick it up. Apparently that person was me and when I asked him to come with me, he flatly replied, “Jana, you really need to learn to do things by yourself”.

I screamed “fuck you” and stormed out of the apartment to get lunch. And of course it was raining. Because why wouldn’t it be?

I pick up the food, come back to the apartment, and the asshole had LOCKED. THE. DOOR. I knew I hadn’t locked it behind me so now I’m even angrier because he knows it’s raining and now he’s purposefully making me stand out in the rain while I fish around in my purse looking for my keys. I am ready to start yelling again when I walk in and see…

Our entire apartment covered in lit candles and him standing by the closet, next to a big pile of taken down Christmas decorations, dressed in a chicken costume, on one knee holding this sign:

Note the words “cluck, cluck” in the bottom corner (I swear that’s what it says).

And then I said yes. To a 6’1″ chicken.

Because that’s how I roll.

I did make him take off the chicken head and say the words because I really, really needed to hear them. But it didn’t matter because I finally had my answer as to whether or not we were ever getting married.

And we did, 15 months later.

We celebrate our 10 year anniversary next April.

P.S. I have no pictures of the chicken because this was back before iPhones and my camera that still used film broke as I was taking the picture and the film got stuck. Then it got exposed and all ruined. But the image is burned in my brain forever.