Vicky's engagement ring III

Okay, I have my glorious poem written but there are two more steps required before I can actually aks the eternal question.

Step 1. Getting parents-of-the-bride approval.

You know what frustrates human progress? People who say, "oh, but that's not the way we've always done it" in workplaces when a keen, young intellectual proposes a new, better way of achieving something. This sort of thinking irks me significantly, especially when it repeatedly happens in different workplaces. You might even say it gets my dander up. (You might but I wouldn't.)

For all of my progressive brilliance, I am surprisingly traditionalist in some respects, and thus it was very important to me to get Vicky's parents' approval of my suitorhood before I went any further.  This proved tremendously more difficult than it first seemed.

I am a poor hobo-tastic, yet surprisingly clean and hygienic, hippie who does not own a car and likes to dress well. When trying to get to Vicky's parents' place without her knowing, I was consistently stymied by her good intentions. I would try to tell her that I was going to ride my bicycle to my parents for a visit. Now, Vicky's parents and mine live quite close to each other and, because we live in Perth and it's summer in December and the weather is preposterously hot, Vicky would always insist that I could use her car instead of sweat to death on my bicycle, and that she would come along to visit her parents at the same time.

Perhaps I am simply not a very good liar. Perhaps I was too nervous to actually commit, against all odds, to getting to Vicky's parents to announce my intentions. Whatever the reasons, I missed every opportunity to do so, although it was important to me. I ended up "checking the post" on Christmas Eve, in the evening, and calling Vicky's parents while walking down our driveway. They weren't even freaking at home! So I did the really classy thing and asked their answering machine if it would be all right...

Three hours later, Vicky and I were getting ready for bed. I was in the bathroom facing my most sleepless Christmas Eve since I was about ten years old. My mobile phone rang in the bedroom and before I could say anything through my toothpaste-filled mouth, Vicky walked into the room, picked up my mobile phone and handed it to me with a picture of her own face on it above 'Vicky calling'.


(Obviously, when I first met Vicky, she was still living at her parents' place, so her home number in my phone was theirs.)

It's exceptionally difficult to have a grateful, gracious, conversation in your bathroom when you've hurriedly spat out toothpaste, are extremely nervous and don't want any eavesdroppers to know what you're talking about. Nevertheless, I managed to squeeze out a 'thank you' and a 'that means a lot to me'. They thought it was brilliant and Vicky thought I was talking to my dad, so it worked out okay in the end, if not as elegantly as I'd hoped.

Step 2. Locating an empty ring box in which I could place my poetic triumph.

This also proved far more difficult than it should have been. What did I manage to do? The spine-shattering and ridiculous answer next time!