{"id":1282,"date":"2009-05-15T00:23:55","date_gmt":"2009-05-15T07:23:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=1282"},"modified":"2009-05-15T00:23:55","modified_gmt":"2009-05-15T07:23:55","slug":"a-case-of-the-human-condition-the-day-she-popped-the-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/a-case-of-the-human-condition-the-day-she-popped-the-question\/","title":{"rendered":"A Case of the Human Condition: The Day She Popped the Question"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Barbara Falconer Newhall<\/em><\/p>\n

Things were getting serious. My boyfriend had moved his goldfish into my apartment.<\/p>\n

I returned from a long weekend with my parents to find that Jon had moved his dimestore pets from his place on Telegraph Hill into mine on Russian Hill.<\/p>\n

He was sheepish about having done this; he knew that I would object.<\/p>\n

\"Jon<\/a>
Jon and Barbara the year that he didn’t pop the question. c 1975 Ruth Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I had my reasons. Jon and I had had a perfectly viable relationship\u00a0up until then. We had fair fights. We shared the housework. We divided expenses – restaurant tabs and grocery bills – right down the middle.<\/p>\n

We liked each other’s friends. And, although Jon did not like Ingmar Bergman and I was not keen on baseball, we stayed calm about these differences and took turns picking out our weekend activities.<\/p>\n

Above all, Jon and I were honest with each other. Right down to admitting it when one of us went out with someone else – something that Jon did often in the early days of our relationship, now in its fifth year.<\/p>\n

I should have seen the goldfish coming.<\/p>\n

Jon had begun eating more and more of his meals at my place, doing more and more of the dishes, showing more and more disappointment if I opted for supper with a female co-worker instead of him.<\/p>\n

He was spending less time than ever at his own apartment, going there only every other day to feed the goldfish and water his rubber tree plant.<\/p>\n

But those short trips gave us both a firm sense of having our own lives, a fall-back position if something went wrong between us.<\/p>\n

For me, the trouble with letting the goldfish into my apartment was that I believed in marriage.<\/p>\n

As I saw it, if Jon wanted to enjoy the rights and pleasures of marriage (hanging a clean shirt in my closet, eating a cozy, home-cooked meal at my wobbly dinner table, acquired for a few dollars at Goodwill) without even the pretense of maintaining his own apartment, then he could darned well marry me.<\/p>\n

I made broad hints to that effect; Jon pretended not to hear.<\/p>\n

I allowed the goldfish to stay, but took a hard line where the rubber tree plant was concerned. Jon continued to stop off at his apartment once or twice a week to water it.<\/p>\n

Our relationship went along nicely, growing more viable by the day.<\/p>\n

Our finances soon became hopelessly entangled: I could no longer remember how much I had spent on groceries. Jon would forget to collect from me for my baseball ticket.<\/p>\n

But every now and then, dreary feelings caught up with me. I wanted to be married, but did I want to marry Jon? If I strong-armed him into proposing marriage, would I say yes?<\/p>\n

Finally, at the end of a drafty evening at Candlestick Park <\/a>– I could have been home watching “War and Peace” on TV – I realized that I would go to that wretchedly cold game with Jon all over again. Furthermore, if I had my way, this was going to be my husband.<\/p>\n

Armed with that knowledge, I was ready to take action.<\/p>\n

It was 1975. A leap year <\/a>was coming up. If Jon did not propose to me by midnight, Dec. 31, I would propose to him.<\/p>\n

It would be more romantic, of course, if he did the proposing. So, I left pictures of diamond rings lying around the apartment. I tried making deals, hinting that as soon as we got engaged, he could move his rubber tree plant in. To no avail.<\/p>\n

I threatened to end our relationship. He knew better.<\/p>\n

New Year’s Eve came and went. I granted Jon an extension. I would hold out until Feb. 29, Leap Year Day.<\/p>\n

On Feb. 28, I gave him one last warning. “How would you feel,” I asked, “going through life, married to someone who had proposed marriage to you?”<\/p>\n

“I think it would be charming,” he said.<\/p>\n

A sweet reply, one that appeased the romantic in me. The next morning, the 29th<\/sup>, I put my arms around Jon’s neck and whispered in his ear, “Will you marry me?”<\/p>\n

“Yes.”<\/p>\n

Jon moved the rubber tree plant in and gave his landlord notice.<\/p>\n

We spent the next months debating wedding plans. Jon wanted to elope.<\/p>\n

I wanted a church wedding. I wanted to be married in full view of my family, Jon’s family, our friends, and God himself.<\/p>\n

Jon said he would be embarrassed by all that attention.<\/p>\n

The issues kept coming up. Would there be dancing? Two rings or one? Should the bride wear white? The details meant a lot to me, and little to Jon.<\/p>\n

Finally, he said gently, “You plan it the way you want it. I’ll be there.” He was.<\/p>\n

Here’s a Huffington Post story that claims that today’s young women and men still prefer men to pop the question.<\/em><\/p>\n

This column was first published on May 31, 1987, in the\u00a0<\/em>Oakland Tribun<\/a><\/em>e<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Things were getting serious. My boyfriend had moved his goldfish into my apartment. I had returned from a long weekend to find that Jon had moved his dimestore pets from his place to mine. He was sheepish about this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1289,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[200,201,202,203,204,55,81,82],"class_list":["post-1282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-case-of-the-human-condition","tag-candlestick-park","tag-goldfiish","tag-ingmar-bergman","tag-leap-year-marriage-proposal","tag-married-life","tag-family-stories","tag-oakland-tribune","tag-on-the-funny-side"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1282\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}