Suddenly, I'm responsible for one of the bleakest day in history of single women: I got engaged

The art of proposing

Let's face it, proposing on the 1st of April was always going to be something risky.
I managed to keep the secret about my intentions for so long that I started to think that I was pulling an April fool's day joke on myself.

I had the location in mind for quite a few months. I didn't have a day decided yet, since Lindsey didn't really buy the ticket until the last minute, leaving me sweating to find the right moment.
I only knew that at least for the first few days we would be just too happy to see each other to complain or argue, so I opted for the soonest available day.
She arrived on Friday, I proposed on Sunday. First of April. I like to keep things simple, this way it will be easy to remember it, in the future.

While on my side more than few people knew about my plan (mainly my flat mate, the DeArdos, my work colleagues, my football team, everyone in Italy and Anna, who helped me with the ring and I want to thank again here), in South Africa only my secret spy, Jill, Lindsey's sister, knew about it.

I needed someone who could let me know the ring size and which kind of rings Lindsey liked, and she did a great job.

When so many months I contacted her, I was secretly hoping that she would actually spill the secret to Lindsey. At least I would have known in advance that she was still coming to see me after realizing what was going on.
Well, Jill didn't, she kept the secret. Obviously I didn't know it, so I was still over confident about it.

You see, proposing is a difficult act that you have to pull together.

It's like deciding to destroy the coliseum in Rome, with some C4 (plastic explosive), and film it: you have only one chance to do it properly.
Miss it, and all the work done for buying and positioning the explosive - and getting the authorizations from the Mayor of Rome- would be wasted (yes, it is an unlikely scenario, but I think that gives you the idea of the effort required).

It's something you do once, and you hope you'll never do it again.

You don't just buy a ring, which is by the way a daunting task for someone like me who has never ever bought an expensive piece of jewelry for anyone else.
You don't just choose a location and a date. You still have to say something right to the right girl, and wait.

Basically you do all the work and you just hope that someone else will see in you something that is worth quite a lot, since the rest of your life may depend on it.

So, when I asked the question, with my back broken after the football much (I cracked my damn tailbone! For a week I couldn't even move), Lindsey said Yes without hesitation.
She took the ring on the wrong hand (but after a quick phone call things were sorted), and then she stayed emotionally shocked for the rest of the day (or the week...).

I was so confident (because of the fact that I didn't know she didn't know) that everything I wanted to say come out just right.

How could she say no the Olafmeister?

As soon as she said yes, in that late sunny afternoon in Richmond Park , by the East Sheen gates (we had our first proper date there, it was a picnic, and after checking my old pictures I found the same tree - that's called effort!), I could hear the scream of millions (and millions) of single girls that just realized that living wasn't worth anymore now that the Olafmeister wasn't available anymore. How could I blame them?

I'm sure that if some statistician will look at the world population numbers in the next years, they will see an increase in the suicidal rate between women aged 18 to 64 on that 1st of April 2007.

Sorry ladies. the meister in not on the market anymore.

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