As March turned to April and April to May, my growing excitement that my plan was slowly coming to fruition filled me with a child-like giddiness that I had not felt since T,H,E K,I,D and I were tots. Unfortunately, by the time June came around, my plan had run into many kinks which ultimately signaled the premature end to any plans of proposing in the middle of a marathon.
The first impediment came as the logistics of my plan were worked out. Given the fact that a marriage proposal is a private matter and many people choose not to be surrounded by friends, family
and strangers alike during it, I knew it would be difficult to get CVS alone to ask her to be my betrothed. With my family also set to meet me at mile 18, I couldn't exactly ask my family to make themselves scarce as they saw me approaching. Thus, any marriage proposal that would take place along the course would lose the element of privacy that I knew CVS would want. Secondly, with my tendency to sweat buckets during any race, not the least of which being a marathon, there wasn't really a clean way I could give CVS an engagement ring without it being drenched in the manifestation of the psychical exertion I had put forth for the first 18 miles of the 26.2 mile race. The proposal would not have been as nice had if CVS' face had been riddled with the look of disgust that follows from her having to touch something which she would find less than appealing. The final logistical impediment came from the fact that, with 8 miles left in the marathon, I would quickly have to leave my fiancee after the proposal if I had any chance of being able to run the rest of the course. For those of you who have also had to stop for a few minutes along a marathon course, you'll agree that it is incredibly difficult to start running again after stopping for any longer than a few seconds.The other impediment that stopped my plan in its tracks was the fact that I had just received Bone's wedding invitation and saw that his wedding would be held a week after the running of the NYC Marathon. Not wanting to steal any of Bone's nuptial spotlights with my engagement, a proposal less than a week before his marriage seemed not to be the best idea.
In the end, CVS became CVSW-elect in late July after she had finished taking the New York State Bar exam and the rest, as they say, is history. It turned out that my intuition of the unworkability of proposing during a marathon turned out to be well founded indeed. Only a few weeks into our engagement, after I told CVSW of my plans, she told me that she was quite happy that I chose my back-up plan.
Funny enough, however, not everybody would agree with CVSW. You see, dear readers, for those of you who were spectators at mile 16 of this year's NYC Marathon a couple of weeks ago, you were treated to a version of my plan in motion. As reported on Gothamist.com on November 2nd, one runner actually went through with proposing to his lady along the marathon course just after mile 16. While the stunned lady accepted the proposal, very little is known about who this creative man is and how long he had been planning to do this.
More than two years after the fact, I still always think how awesome it would have been to propose during the New York City Marathon. More than thinking about the actual proposal, however, I always wonder whether, had CVS denied my request to become my bride, I would have shrugged it off and continued with the last 8 miles of the marathon. Hmmmm.....
0 comments:
Post a Comment