Tonight I had the great privilege and pleasure to help my friend Quin propose to his girlfriend Becca. Since Quin is one of my best friends, and this was his first time proposing to a girl, and also my first time witnessing someone propose to a girl, i figured it was blog-worthy. Especially considering she (spoiler alert) ACTUALLY AGREED TO MARRY HIM.
So a day or so ago Quin called me and asked me to help him out with this. He said my stealth skills would be needed. I of course was excited about this, since I am an ardent practitioner of ninjitsu, or the art of the ninja. I have several ninja books that have taught me how to hide very effectively, as well as where the best places to stab guards so they die before they can scream are. They also contain various recipes for concocting blinding powder to throw in the eyes of your enemies, but there may be children reading and so it would be irresponsible for me to reveal such matters here.
We were supposed to meet at 5:30 at Kohlers to plan everything out. I pulled in at 5:29 only to get a text from Quins sister Piper saying we were now meeting at 5:50. I decided to make lemonade out of lemons and went next door to the Hawaiian Ice sno-cone shack, where I stuck with the lemonade theme and got a pink lemonade sno-cone instead of the usual raspberry. I should mention that it was delicious and reasonably priced, and the service was excellent. And I'm not just saying that because one of my good friends owns it and my little brother works there and I get half-off because of it. Since probably a total of 4 people will ever read this blog, that was kind of pointless advertising, but hey any publicity is good publicity right? Anyways, I walked around Kohlers eating my sno-cone and feeling clever about my little "lemonade from lemons" thing, so I texted Piper and told her my clever lemon story, and she texted back that I was gay or something similarly hurtful. Luckily there is a chapter in the ninja book about ignoring hurtful texts, so I just used the techniques discussed in the book and didn't let it get to me.
Finally 5:50 came and they rolled up, so I got in the car and we headed up the canyon to scout out the terrain and come up with a suitable plan. We didn't want to pay the guards (or whatever they are called) at the mouth of the canyon since we were only going to be there for a couple minutes, so we just told the lady in the booth that we were going up to get ready for Quins proposal. The wonderful lady at the booth mistook this for an invitation for her input, and proceeded to give us a verbal tour of roughly the three hundred most ideal places Quin could propose to Becca at. After about 5 minutes of this nonsense, Quin noticed that I was attempting to hang myself with my belt from the little hangar-hook thingy on the roof of the car, and we drove on. If anyone wants to know a good place to propose up the canyon, talk to Suzanne. Good grief. I guess forest rangers don't get enough romance in their daily jobs or something, because I'm pretty sure she would still be talking right now if we would have let her.
As we drove up the canyon we discussed specifics of the plan. Quin was a little nervous, and asked me and Piper for advice on what he should say. Piper said that this was Quins proposal and no one could tell him what to say, it had to come from his heart. I said Quin should tell Becca that she was really hot and had a smokin' bod. Piper thought my idea was dumb...but Piper has never been proposed to and doesn't really know what she's talking about.
We finally arrived at our destination, which was this little body of water called Tibble Fork. I would call it a lake but I don't know if it's technically a lake. But basically that's what it is. We got out and tried to plan the proposal, but Quin and I kept getting distracted by dozens of these little prairie-dog-like creatures that live on the shores of the lake. We kept trying to hit them with rocks, much to the chagrin of Piper, who is a bit of a tree hugger. Unfortunately, none of our throws connected with the little vermin. After the water level of the lake had risen about 2 inches because of Pipers tears, we decided we'd better plan the proposal. What we came up with was this:
Wait first let me explain...Quin had already done a bit to throw Becca off the trail. Becca knew a proposal was coming up in the near future, but didn't think he had the ring yet because he had told her they were going ring-shopping the next day. Becca believed that they were meeting several friends for a bonfire at around 9:30. This should have been Beccas first clue, since almost all of Quins friends are in elementary school and have bedtimes well before 9:30, and aren't allowed to play with matches. Just joking. Ok NOW for the plan:
Piper and I would head up about 20 minutes before Quin and Becca. We would build a fire on the shores of the lake, then go hide in the trees. Quin and Becca would arrive and go to the fire, with Becca presumably wondering where everyone was. Quin would play dumb and small-talk with her until he heard the signal (Piper blowing once on a harmonica) that meant that we were in position and ready for the next step. Upon hearing the signal, Quin was supposed to initiate the proposal. When he got down on one knee, that was OUR signal to bring out the secret weapon: A giant board with lightbulbs mounted on it spelling out "Becca Marry Me?" powered by a generator. We would turn on the generator and plug in the lights right as he proposed. What girl could say no to that? In case she did say no, the backup plan was that I would shoot her in the leg from my hiding spot in the woods with a sniper rifle until she said yes. I'm not even joking, that was the backup plan.
We traveled back down the canyon and went our separate ways for a few hours. I made the preparations for the fire, which wasn't hard, and then met Piper back at Kohlers at 8:45 or so. We took her car, and the drive up the canyon was a very interesting one. At one point in the conversation, Piper mentioned that if she was about to hit a deer with her car she would swerve off the small cliff to our right before she would risk harming the deer. I asked her literally about 100 times if she was kidding, but she wasn't. She would have gladly sacrificed both our lives for a stupid deer. I spent most of the rest of the car ride trying to convince Piper that she is kind of a hippie, and she spent most of the rest of the car ride trying to make me feel inferior for not knowing her hippie music. It may sound like I dislike Piper from this paragraph, but I actually think she is hilarious and I greatly enjoy her company.
We arrived at the lake and hid the car. I built the fire by rubbing 2 rocks together and then dumping half a container of lighter fluid on some logs and using a match. Just how the cavemen did it. I wanted to give the generator/sign device a quick test run just to make sure everything was running smoothly before Quin and Becca arrived. It was here that our carefully laid plans began to go awry. Piper suddenly realized that she had neglected to bring the extension cord. I should point out here that prior to this moment, anytime anyone asked or told Piper anything she would accuse them of "freaking out" and tell them to "calm down." Well, at this point the tables turned quite dramatically. Piper had somewhat of a panic attack and started hyperventilating and muttering that she had ruined her brothers proposal. I knew we were running out of time and threw a bucket of cold water on her face and told her to pull herself together. Just kidding, only the second part of that sentence is true. I thought we could still salvage the plan, but it would be tricky. I pulled the generator out of the trees and onto the shore about 30 feet from the fire, where I hid it behind a boulder. I then put the sign on the shore next to it, face-down so Becca wouldn't be able to read it in the unlikely event she walked by. I figured we could stay hidden in the trees, and then when Quin got down on one knee we could run out and plug in the sign. The problem was we only had about an inch of slack to work with on the cord, so we'd have to position the generator perfectly. We tried to plug it in for a test run, but there just wasn't enough cord to make it work. It looked like the sign idea was doomed. Just then, Quin and Becca pulled up.
I put the sign back on the ground and hid in the trees with Piper. She was still kind of going a little nutso. Quin and Becca were getting out of the car only about 20 yards away, and Piper kind of panicked. There is a scene in Bambi where there are a couple of birds hiding out in the grass while hunters are nearby. The tension builds as the hunters get closer and closer, and finally one of the birds snaps and yells "I can't take it any longer!!" and flies out of the grass and gets gunned down by the hunters. I would describe Pipers psyche as being roughly equivalent to that of the bird on Bambi, and what happened next was nearly identical to the movie. We were well-hidden, but Piper was getting more and more nervous, until suddenly and inexplicably she tried to run away. I was a better friend than the bird in the movie, however, and grabbed her after only a few steps and made her hold still, at which point she started gnashing her teeth, making animal noises, and drooling. Clearly some sort of post-traumatic stress syndrome for forgetting the extension cord. Great. Somehow Becca didn't notice the commotion in the woods. Great Bambi video here:
Things took another turn for the worse almost immediately. Instead of stopping at the fire like he was supposed to, Quin took Becca for a walk down the shore. They would walk right past the generator and sign, but I wasn't too worried about that, because as long as Quin didn't let her flip over the sign she wouldn't know what it was. They would probably just ignore it anyways, which they did. The real problem was that they were going to walk right past us, and it was still light enough that Becca would almost certainly see us. My mind raced as I thought about what Jack Bauer would do. Jack would probably just kill everyone within 500 yards, which wasn't really an option. Shoot. I instead settled on a tactic that is something of a cliche in spy movies...the old "pretend to be young lovers enjoying a tender moment" trick. We've all seen it. A guy and a girl are getting chased by the bad guys, quickly turn a corner and start making out. The bad guys turn the corner and ignore them and run right past. It works all the time in the movies. I quickly grabbed Piper, but unfortunately she was still rolling her eyes, making weird rodent noises, and had drool all over her face, so I thought it would be weird to kiss her. I settled for the tender embrace. We both had hooded sweatshirts on, and as they walked by they spotted us, but Becca didn't suspect a thing.
They didn't go much farther before Quin apparently realized he was deviating from the plan, and they walked back to the fire and lay down on a blanket. At this point, Piper and I had an idea...we would pull the cord out of the question mark on the sign, which would give us more slack and allow us to plug it in. As an added bonus, since the sign would now be using assumptive language, I figured the odds of Becca saying "yes" increased about 22 percent. "Becca Marry Me" implies much less choice in the matter for her than "Becca Marry Me?"
Piper had finally pulled herself together a bit, so we crept over to the rock the generator was hidden behind and began fixing the sign. Piper kept complaining about splinters, but I felt little sympathy considering it was her fault we were even in this mess. After we got the sign plugged in, we left the generator off and snuck back into the trees. Piper blew loudly on her harmonica to let Quin know that we were ready, and we waited for the signal.
Several minutes went by, and Quin and Becca were still just lying down by the fire. Quin had told us that he planned on proposing within 5 minutes or so of arriving so Becca didn't have time to get suspicious. Well, it had been about 20 and nothing was happening. We thought maybe he hadn't heard the harmonica so Piper gave it a few more plays just to make sure. Still nothing happened.
Another problem began to arise as the minutes ticked by: The fire was going out. It was getting so dark that we could no longer see Quin and Becca, and wouldn't be able to see when he got down on one knee. At this point I made an executive decision...Quin had had enough time. We needed to turn on the generator and light the sign now, or we'd never know when Quin gave us the signal.
We walked out of the woods and fired up the generator. The sign worked beautifully. I had had my doubts about the whole idea, thinking it was kind of corny, but it was actually pretty cool. Since we couldn't see Quin and Becca anymore, we just stood by the sign and figured they'd walk over to us eventually when the deed was done.
A couple minutes later they came walking up. It was pretty apparent that she had said yes, which was good because it would have been an awkward situation if she said no. Plus I would have had to shoot her in the leg. Becca had never suspected a thing the entire time, and was pretty much in shock. She was near tears and would just randomly grab Quin and kiss him. I'm normally pretty opposed to PDA, but it was cute.
Apparently Quin hadn't really been that close to proposing when we'd turned on the sign. Luckily he spotted it before Becca did, and managed to keep her from looking at it until he managed to get the conversation flowing in the right direction. Piper took a couple pictures of them by the sign, and then they left to go tell family and friends and stuff. We put out the fire, packed up and headed out. Luckily we didn't see any deer on the drive home.
So anyways...congrats to Quin and Becca!! Quin has been one of my best friends for a long time, we've done a lot of crazy stuff together, and even though it's always a little bit of a bummer when one of your friends jumps on the marriage bandwagon, I'm so happy for him. I don't know Becca as well as I know Quin, but she's an awesome girl and it's pretty obvious she's getting the short end of the deal! I don't know how you pulled it off Quin!
PS....Piper may not have drooled or any of that stuff...but it was dark, so she might have, so I may have taken some creative liberties. But again, it was dark so I may not have.
