An Elaborate Ruse!

It was a typical Friday morning. The week had worn me down and I was pretty stressed out about work. I wasn't feeling good at all. My only comfort was knowing the weekend was coming up.

Fortunately, I had a great boyfriend who called me just when I was about to explode and he invited me to lunch. Tam and I hardly go to lunch together on Fridays. Phoenix Technologies, where he worked, catered free lunches. Me? I skip lunch because at eSynch where I worked, we had Taekwondo. I declined the invitation not only because of my hectic schedule, Fridays also happened to be sparring day and I never missed it. He insisted that we go and threatened never to invite me to lunch again if I don't (jokingly, of course). He was very persistent. A bit suspicious I thought because he's usually understanding and supportive about my insane addiction to Taekwondo. But I also know he's aware of how stressed out I was, so I thought he's just being very sweet. Even though I had so much to finish that day at work, I asked my boss to let me have the afternoon off. I found out later that my boss was in on the whole surprise which is why he didn't have any problems letting me off the hook on such a busy afternoon.

Tam picked Balboa in Newport to have lunch. He had a cooler in the trunk for our deserts. He picked up some sushi and he rented a boat for us to eat in. In the long time that I've known Tam, he hardly did anything that required so much planning. Still, I had no clue of what was to come. I thought that he was just trying to relieve me of some stress. You have to understand, Tam's not very good at surprising me so who knew that after all these years that he'd still try. I didn't know that all these were part of an elaborate ruse. All these clues, at the time, were not very obvious to me.

We ate lunch and chatted. The wind felt good, the temperature was just right and the water was relaxing. It was a beautiful California afternoon. After we finished we sat on the boat and kicked back for about an hour. As I was getting ready to turn the boat around to return it, Tam took out a box from his pocket. I didn't immediately see it but when I finally did, I knew exactly what it was and I was nervous! "Open it!", I said. Then he opened it.

"Put it on my finger", he must have been nervous, I had to tell him what to do.

"Will you be Mrs. Pham?" was what he said next. I let him put the ring on my finger and I still didn't answer. Not that I wasn't sure, I guess I was just having way too many flashbacks in my head at the time. I was in shock. The series of suspicious yet orchestrated events from my boss to the guy who had so eagerly rented us a boat and told us he gave us the "best one he had" all made sense.

He asked again. I laughed, I was speechless. I was just staring at my ring. I looked at him and finally got a word out of my mouth. I said, "Yes!".

It wasn't a typical Friday morning after all.

Carmela Pham
http://www.carmelasantos.com/ourwedding/navs/proposal.htm

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