A Decent Proposal, Part 2

Originally published November 3, 2000, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1407

When last we left what we laughingly refer to as “Our Hero,” the situation was as follows:

I had hit upon the brilliant scheme of proposing to long-time girlfriend Kathleen at The Adventurers Club at Disney World’s Pleasure Island. Everything was in place, with the members (i.e., cast) of The AC ready to make it a reality, the wall-mounted puppet known as “The Colonel” ready to work from the scripted proposal I’d drawn up, and everything set to go precisely at 10 p.m. that evening. The spanner tossed into the cunning plan was that my sister Beth and her husband Rande—down in Florida for a second honeymoon—were working in tandem with Kathleen to surprise me at The Adventurers Club, and the decision had been made to switch the rendezvous time to 9 p.m., threatening to foul up my carefully scheduled scheme and leaving me no way of informing the folks at The AC that we were going to be there an hour earlier.

By 6 p.m. I was sweating bullets. Kathleen, Gwen, Shana, Ariel and I had returned to the cabin at Fort Wilderness, preparing to go out to dinner at a restaurant at the Grand Floridian, and I still had been unable to break away and inform the AC of the change in plans. Still, I couldn’t resist one moment of personal whimsy: Kathleen, in prepping to go out, said, “Should I wear my hair up or down?”

“Down,” I said. “I mean, I think it looks better that way, and I’d want you to look your best tonight.”

“Why?” she asked, curious at my phrasing.

“Because,” I said suavely, “I’m positive that when we’re in the Adventurer’s Club, every eye will be on you.”

“Flatterer,” she said.

Meantime, we’d been informed that a package was waiting for us at the Fort Wilderness Trading Post. We knew what it was: It was stuff we’d bought in the park the day before that we’d had shipped to FW so we wouldn’t have to schlep it around. The thought was that we’d hop in the car, swing by the Trading Post, pick up the package and head out.

That’s when I came up with my new cunning plan. Complaining of stomach pains, I went into the bathroom, shut the door… and proceeded to make loud retching noises. It wasn’t that difficult: My stomach was in knots anyway. I came out and said that something we’d had at lunch disagreed with me. “Tell you what,” I said, looking wan, “why don’t you guys go on ahead to the Trading Post… give me a few minutes to pull myself together… come back and pick me up.”

Immediately solicitous, Shana said, “Why don’t they go and I’ll stay here and keep you company.”

“Me too!” Ariel piped up.

Desperate beyond measure, I shouted, “Will you just friggin’ go and leave me alone for a few minutes?!?”

“What a grouch,” sniffed Shana, and off they went. The instant I heard the car pull out I was on the phone. First I couldn’t get an operator. Then when I finally did, the operator rang the AC. No answer. She tried another number there. Still no answer. Third number. No answer. I kept an eye on the window, getting more frantic. One last number—and a bartender at the AC picked up just as I saw the car coming back. The message I gave him must have sounded incoherent: “Tell Fletcher that the guy Bill Shepherd told him will be showing up with the proposal thing with the Colonel will be there at 9 instead of 10!”

“Which Fletcher?” said the bartender. “Different people play Fletcher on different nights; what if the Fletcher that Bill Shepherd spoke to called in sick and the guy playing him tonight doesn’t know what you’re talking about?”

“Great. Thanks. Something else for me to worry about,” I said crankily. “Just do the best you can, OK?” And I hung up an instant before the car honked for me, grabbed the engagement ring out of the shoe that I’d smuggled it down in, shoved it in my pocket and ran out the door.

At the restaurant were all sorts of really nice looking dishes… none of which I could reasonably have since I’d just “thrown up” minutes before, so naturally I had to stick with something mild. I wound up ordering mac and cheese off the kid’s menu. Everyone at dinner was very solicitous of me, probably because I looked like a nervous wreck, which I was. What if the whole thing fell apart? What if she said no? Geez, what if she said yes? Was I ready for this, really? Three years, which had seemed so long to be together, suddenly seemed like “only” three years. My guess is that if Kath hadn’t known Beth and Rande were expecting to meet us there, she would have suggested we cancel the evening excursion entirely, because I was a mess.

We got to the Adventurer’s Club at five minutes to the appointed hour. “Fletcher Hodges,” the club’s curator and my contact, was standing by the door acting as greeter. We entered, me bringing up the rear, and I said in a low voice, “My name’s Peter… Bill Shepherd said I should touch base with you.”

Immediately he replied, “Yes, I know, everything’s ready.”

I breathed a sigh of relief and then I said, in a slightly louder voice, “Could you tell me where the men’s room is?”

Fletcher immediately said jauntily and loudly, “The men’s room? Certainly! Why, I’ll show you there myself!”

And off we marched, getting a very strange look from Gwen. Once we rounded a corner, Fletcher pulled me through a “cast only” door and, in private, we locked down the final details. At 9:05 the Adventurers members were going to embark on their radio broadcast (don’t ask) in the library. That let out at 9:25 into the Main Salon, where the Colonel was, and that’s when the Colonel would involve Kathleen in the discussion leading to the proposal. Kath wouldn’t suspect anything at first, because the Colonel habitually busted on people in the crowd, so she wouldn’t wonder why he was singling her out; she’d just chalk it to luck of the draw.

The radio show was in particularly fine form. Even my tough-to-impress teenagers were roaring with laughter. I was feeling more relaxed with each passing moment. We emerged into the Main Salon and the Colonel, on cue, came to life. He verbally fenced with the crowd for a moment or two, looked over in our direction and said, “Hello, young lady, what’s your name?”

Immediately Gwen piped up, “Gwen!” I felt a momentary return of panic: If the Colonel wasn’t paying attention to the names, or had limited vision, I was going to wind up proposing to my fifteen-year-old daughter.

Without missing a beat, the Colonel said, “Hello, Gwen, and who’s the young woman next to you?”

“Kathleen,” she replied.

“Kathleen! My, you’re a tall drink of water, aren’t you!” said the Colonel. He started to banter with her and then went into the scripted material. My heart was racing. I reached into my pocket, ready to pull out the engagement ring on cue.

And then a low voice said, almost in my ear, “Hey, aren’t you Peter David? I’m a big fan!” I thought, Oh, geez, not now, and I turned and Beth was standing there, grinning. Rande was just behind her. I blinked like an owl in a spotlight, and suddenly my attention was divided. On the one hand my mind was racing with questions as to what my sister and her husband were doing hundreds of miles from home, and on the other hand the Colonel was fast approaching the point at which he would say, You see, the rather round fellow you’ve been dating for the past three years—Peter—is standing next to you with an engagement ring. If I was talking to Beth instead of holding the open box in my hand, everything would come unraveled. So I grabbed her by the side of the head, pulled her ear toward me and whispered, “Just listen!”

I switched my attention back to the moment just as the Colonel was saying “rather round fellow” and pulled the box from my pocket, flipping it open like Captain Kirk would a communicator. By this point the throng of about a hundred people suddenly realized something genuine, as opposed to staged, was going on and became totally caught up in it.

When the light hit the ring, people started “awwwiiing” or reacting with similar comments of surprise. Tears worked their way down Kathleen’s cheek as the dime dropped. Shana immediately started yelling, “Out of the way!” as she swung her camera up and began snapping pictures. Gwen was grinning. Ariel was incandescent. Fletcher, on a balcony overhead, was videotaping it. There were more photograph records of this than the JFK assassination. The Colonel continued, “And Peter’s hoping that you will accept this proposal of joining in the adventure of marriage, and become a wife to him and a stepmother to his three daughters—preferably not an evil stepmother, because we all know where that leads,” and then arrived at the one moment that was completely out of my hands: “What say you, Kathleen—?”

Well, she said yes, and everyone cheered, and the manager of the Adventurer’s Club brought out a bottle of champagne (the good stuff) compliments of the AC, which we promptly cracked open. It was a good thing Beth and Rande were there because they helped us drink the champagne. And then Kath ran off to call her folks while I managed to get my pulse down to something normal. And when she came back, I put my arms around her and said, “Told you every eye in the Adventurer’s Club would be on you.”

So that’s how Kathleen and I got engaged. And if you’re ever at Pleasure Island, swing by the AC and give Fletcher and the others a hearty “Kungaloosh!” from the future Peter and Kathleen David.

Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705. China pattern will be registered at the Magic Kingdom.