How Steuard Proposed to Kim

This is the email that I sent out to a bunch of friends and family explaining the details of how Kim and I got engaged; I wrote it on Saturday, April 11, 1998. For those who don't know, the "Mudd Occasional Balls" were formal dances that took place a few times each year (Kim and I had both taken some "social dance" classes by that point, so we weren't half bad). And "Sir Roger de Coverly" is an English folk dance that was generally the last dance of the ball.

Well, for those of you who weren't at the Mudd Occasional Ball tonight, I am pleased to announce that in an amazing display of pseudo-spontaneity, Kim and I have gotten engaged. What is "pseudo-spontaneity", you may ask? Well, that takes some telling, so here are those details I promised.

Kim and I have been talking about this possibility more and more for the past couple of months. Recently, it's seemed increasingly like a sure thing.
Neither of us could quite accept the idea of a proposal in a dorm room: too prosaic. We needed something a little more special, unique, whatever... but couldn't find time to set up quite the right moment.
"We are just far too psychic" says Kim: at the end of the second-to-last set of dances at the Mudd Occasional, we both simultaneously had a mental image of a waltz ending with me down on one knee in the middle of the dance floor.
Immediately upon recognizing this shared image, we were both scared out of our wits.
Kim's reaction was to try and talk me out of it. My reaction to that was to start arguing in favor of the plan. ("It's too late... we haven't left ourselves any way out. I've got to do this, or else you'll be disappointed (if a bit relieved)." "Will we ever find a better opportunity, considering how busy we are until the end of the year?" And so on.) We discussed and discussed, and every time Kim started to be more open to the idea, I started to get worried.
During the last couple dances, we were both horribly tense and nervous... you wouldn't believe how hard it is to swing when you can't remember what the moves are...
Finally, I asked Kim if it really was okay, and she said it would be. We spent at least the last two or three minutes of the waltz spinning around the middle of the floor, waiting for the song to end. When it did, I dropped to one knee, gazed up into her eyes, and proposed. Somehow, Kim managed to get out a "yes"; had I been less nervous myself, I should have been worried that her knees were going to buckle and land her flat on top of me. (I must admit that I was a bit concerned about doing the same thing once I finally stood up.)

So, you can see what I mean by "pseudo-spontaneity": neither of us was expecting it more than an hour before it happened, but we had a running debate almost until the moment was upon us. It was interesting... as we left the floor, most of the crowd just walked by, but Treasa Sweek came up behind us and said, "What just happened there?" "Oh, nothing..." said Kim with a big (if somewhat dazed) grin on her face, and then in a rediculously mushy voice, I added, "We're engaged." I'm not exactly sure what her reaction was, but I think it was some sort of loud whoop. She asked if she could announce it, and then proceeded to tell everyone at the ball that we had just gotten engaged. Everyone clapped and cheered, and then we went on to the last Sir Roger de Coverly of our Mudd career.

Okay, that's all for now. I'm not going to let Steuard go on any longer. If you want more details, you can ask.

Kim

Ok, well, I'll go with that, then. Bye for now!

Steuard