a proposal of disproportionate importance

When I was sixteen, I fell in love with a boy with freckles and red hair. He wore a long green canvas jacket with a brown leather collar that shone slick along the edges that rubbed against his neck. We gingerly held sweaty hands when we drove to the mall in his parents' boxy car. We stood spooning inappropriately in public places as high school stupids do. I was like a tortoise with her teenaged boy shell. We kissed, crumpling the K-mart blanket on his twin bed while his younger brother played pixelated video games in the next room.

Though it wasn't always Sprite and carnations, it was a sufficient estimation of love. We played like grown-ups. We had rosy cheeks and late night phone calls. We ate at restaurants with an air of solidarity as a young couple. He bought a red sports car. I went to Paris on a school trip. We went to two proms, his then mine. We graduated from our high school, he then me. He enrolled for classes at a local community college while I applied and was accepted to UCLA. These were grand accomplishments in our small town minds.

On an early summer afternoon before I left for college, he came to visit me at my house. My parents were in the kitchen cooking dinner and I recall the smell of garlic and soy sauce being heated and tossed in the steel wok. My sisters were probably watching some ill-conceived sitcom re-run. We sat in the front room, away from the bustle and likely spoke about his latest car accessory purchase. It was all very plain. When it was time for him to leave, I walked with him to his car which was parked along the curb in front of our house. He opened the door and sat down in the driver's seat. I stood between the door and his leg which was still outside of the car. I remember this clearly.

It was then that he took my hand and said "I have something to ask you." I asked him what it was.

"Will you marry me?" No knee, no ring, no plan.

My response: "What? I can't marry you!" No fainting, no crying, no hesitation.

"Why not?"

"Where would we live?" I was incredulous.

"With my parents."

"We can't live with your parents."

Even at the hopeful age of seventeen, I knew that this sweet boy with a penchant for car accessories would not a good husband make. No, no, no. My answer was no. Even to this day, it is one of the easiest questions I have ever answered. My response was unfiltered, unabashed and steadfast.

It was not for lack of love or money that I declined my first marriage proposal. It was for lack of substance. There was no foundation beneath his decision. He didn't have a life-changing epiphany about the effervescent glory I possessed. I wasn't rich or pregnant. It was more about his insecurity than it was about my fabulousness. It may have been a fleeting idea he had as he walked out the door. A thought akin to remembering to bring your wallet or sensing a chill in the air and grabbing a sweater. A casual thought. Later he would divulge that he just didn't want me to go away to college and meet another boy. He didn't believe that I would stay with him and marriage was the solution that the simpleton in him favored. He was right. In the end, I did leave and no marriage could have prevented me. I believe in the gravitas and honor of marriage. I don't think he even thought or was even capable of thinking that deeply. But even without any sense of devotion, this young man would not be deterred.

"Ok, don't make a decision now," he coaxed. "Pinky promise me that you'll think about it and we can decide in a year." PINKY PROMISE. He looked tender. So, being the good girlfriend I was despite what I knew in my seventeen year-old heart, I hooked my pinky with his and forced myself to mutter "Ok." We broke up a few months later but for a time, during the summer of 1995, I was briefly, mildly engaged/pinky promised to a very sweet but simple boy with red hair and freckles.