(untitled), part 1 of 2

As I pulled my long velvety concert dress over my head in the crowded church library-turned dressing room that evening, I didn’t expect to end the night an engaged woman.

But if I had been expecting engagement, I’d have expected to be excited about it.

And I would have expected a ring.

And I would have expected my fiancé to be ecstatic, or at least happy, about the whole thing – not denying to his friends that it ever even happened.

And it only seems natural that we would have been dating beforehand.

At least these are the things I imagined about engagement as a little girl, wearing pink plastic jewelry and admiring a turquoise Ring Pop on my right hand.

Granted, many of my five-year-old dreams have been a little off. Take prom, for instance – I told myself I’d attend in a royal-blue leotard dress, black leggings, hoop earrings and a side ponytail. I’d show up at the high school on the school bus like all the other kids.

Even taking the Sleeping Beauty-idealism of childhood into account, I never thought I’d be proposed to in the monkey house of an Omaha zoo – a fake waterfall rushing behind the rope bridge, the gorillas beating their chests in the background, and the orangutans gnawing obliviously on predestined vegetation. Exotic birds drowning out his stumbling words. Impatient zoo-goers pacing behind us as we tie up the passage to the chimps.

Bizarre as it is, that would all be just fine if it were coming from the right man.

At least I don't remember that first proposal.