Interview of Me, Part 1

Okay, so I opened up the floor for an interview of me (not that I think I'm really all that interesting, but because it's spring and I'm running low on blog topics--you should know that if I have a blog about revenue sharing in Major League Baseball) in the comments of yesterday's blog, and I promise I'll get to them all and yes, you can still ask questions...

The first one was regarding how I proposed to my wife, Tracy...to which my higher-order life-liver sister Jilly responded and had the major parts of the story generally correct. However, some background needs to be given and some details are necessary as well. Here we go.

I had graduated Auburn in the summer of 1987 and Tracy still had to finish her entire senior year. My mom had some sort of trust fund I was going to school on (due to my father's life insurance and such) and since my sister wouldn't start college for two more years, my mom said I could go ahead a knock out a year of seminary and she could afford it.

So...I head off to Dallas Theological Seminary. Tracy stays in Auburn. We had known each other for nearly four years, and dated seriously for about 7 months or so at that time when I left in August of 87.

We write letters for a couple of months since I only had a dorm floor phone we were supposed to use for only 5 minutes at a time...except late at night. There were huge late-night phone bills and such. In fact, her dad purchased her a plane ticket to come visit in October...joking (but not really) that a plane ticket cost him as much as his phone bill.

So, Tracy flies out. When I see her at the airport the first thought in my brain was, "You have to marry HER." The weekend visit was spent discussing that very thing. What it would be like to be married and in ministry. It was all very intellectual and well-meaning...but we were discussing how to swim without getting in the water. We were talking about what we didn't know about. We left off with the idea we'd probably get engaged around February and then married the following summer.

When she left that weekend I was convinced I should marry her. So, I got this job on Mondays driving cars from one dealership to another and making about $115 bucks once a week doing that.

Later that month there was a stock market dip of some significance...enough that my mom told me that there would be no more money and that I was officially cut off and would have to come home from seminary. This was actually a good thing because seminary and I were butting heads on several issues of behavior that I found inconsistent with what their doctrines were...ahhhh, youth.

The bottom line is that I was going to have to come home from seminary and get some sort of job at the end of the semester. So, here I am, a completely broke and unemployed seminary drop out/cast off, in love, wanting to get married. Well, I wasn't entirely broke...I had saved up about $1,000 to buy a ring.

I didn't want to spend the money without her parent's blessing, which I got (they made it really easy on me, not asking one single thing about jobs and seminary cast-off, etc.)...so I headed off to a prominent Birmingham discount jewelry place called Golbro. I could afford a really good half-carat diamond or a not-so-good three-quarter carat one. The salesman said he could mount the half-carat one high in the setting so it would LOOK like the three-quarter carat one. I bought the salesman's crap, and I bought the ring, for $895 plus tax. I bought myself some sneakers, a tank of gas and some cassette tapes with the remainder. Now I was truly broke.

The next step was the actual asking. Tracy had come home from college and having the engagement ring was like having a loaded gun around the house...I never knew when it was going off, but I told EVERYONE about it. Tracy's entire family knew, and most of her friends (her roommate had even tried the ring on, for crying out loud!) did, too. I don't remember if I told my friends or not, but my mom had prepared my family that Brent would be bringing his fiance to Christmas Eve with them.

So, I had a few days to come up with something cool.

Which I didn't. I just hung out with Tracy, which is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life anyway. The "moment" just didn't seem that important. About the time it did, it was the 23rd of December and all the things I could come up with involved my friends helping out, and none of which could scrape up the time to help out since they had their own family Christmas Eve things going. A couple of good ideas went untested and untried.

Apparently I wasn't very worried because Tracy was coming over to help my mom make deviled eggs and I still had ZERO plan. The night before I did purchase a HORRIBLE sweater, the kind you'd buy on December 23rd at 9PM on a "clearance" table in a department store...thinking I might could use that somehow. It was read and blue and set me back 8 bucks or something like that.

Pretty much by default at that point, I decided Tracy and I would just exchange gifts alone in my room, of all places (which, being a guy, I didn't bother to clean up and it had this "living out of a suitcase" look I had been working on for about two weeks). So, we head up there, and for some reason, my television was on MTV and I never turned it off. Weird.

She gives me a plethora of great gifts (her parents had let her spend a bit more than they had planned, knowing I had gotten her a ring and stuff). I remember a nice watch, which I have no idea what happened to, and a very cool 1980's Kevin Bacon kind of topcoat...which I have never stopped wearing. I love that coat and wore it through the "out of fashion" phase, but now, apparently, it's retro cool among my teenagers. I just like the coat, so I wear it. I'm nothing if not pragmatic.

Speaking of pragmatic, the story continues...

She opens the horrible sweater and tells me how much she likes it, especially knowing that I'm broke (she's nothing if not sweet...but passive/aggressive. she liked the sweater...given the reality I'm broke and gave it my best shot...which means she hates the sweater). But she lied sweetly.

I told her that I did have something else, reached into my bedside table drawer, pulled out a box...and took the ring out. She couldn't see it yet.

More background: I used to do this stupid thing where I would pull quarters out from behind her ears like an grandfather would do to his grandkids...whenever I needed change on dates, say at the movie, I'd just put the $8.00 on the counter...act like I was looking for change, and then pull two quarters out from behind her ears. Keep in mind I have never practiced this in any magical or slight-of-hand sense...it was obviously a horrible maneuver. It got laughs from everybody else around ("Oh, how cyuuute!") and eye rolls from her ("It's not FUNNEEEE anymore.").

So, I took the ring out from behind her ear: "Hmmmmm. What's THIS?" Got down on one knee, and asked her for the honor of being my wife. There's some debate as to exactly when she said "yes" but she said it somewhere amid the hugs and such.

Oddly enough, the popular song "I Got My Mind Set On You" by Paul McCartney was playing on MTV at the time...and since everybody knew, Tracy finally had to call her sorority sister in Florida to find someone who hadn't already heard. Amazingly, everyone kept it from her.

Which gives me the chance to answer another question: If you could change one thing in your life's history, what would it be?

The entire process of engagement and getting married. I would've done something more romantic for her at that time, and saved for a better ring. I would've spent less on the wedding and taken a honeymoon instead of doing lots of stuff on the "cheap." I would've done a better job of being a fiance instead of bitching about the process. I would've spent more of that time in life being more focused on her and our life together. We got off to a naive start, and I've learned you can't go back an undo that time in life...we got off to a pragmatic start and didn't take the time to enjoy that time and be sappy and romantic. Except for the girl, I think I just might change a LOT of those decisions in starting life together.

More tomorrow...