On Our Way To Crazy

It was Wednesday. We had been at camp for two days and everyone was finally settled into the rhythm. Things were running smoothly. I was relieved and feeling quite a sense of accomplishment. We’d worked hard to plan this camp, Aaron and I. He was the camp admin and had planned all of the evening activities, and I’d been responsible for all the recreation. My games were a success, and my elaborate plan for moving 500 students around the campus of Ouachita Baptist University in a timely manner without running into each other seemed to be working. Things were good.

I was walking to morning service with Abby and Michelle, two of the other counselors, when a couple of the youth pastors approached us. Our ‘late night’ event that evening was a student talent show, and the staff had decided that we should put on a staff skit at the end of the show. The idea was to play the Dating Game, with the three of us as the bachelorettes. They’d choose a seventh-grade boy to be the bachelor and write questions for him to ask us. We would create personalities to answer with, and when he chose his date, we’d send one of the big hairy stinky boy counselors we had around the wall. Ha ha, joke’s on the kid, the end. Great.

We decide that Michelle will be really girly and silly, I will be really mean and bitter, and Abby will incorporate the phrase ‘peaches and cream’ into every answer. It comes time for the talent show, and the kids blow us away with their creativity. We have dancing. We have skits. We have songs. Everyone is having a great time. Then it’s time for the staff skit.

The three of us get on stage, and it’s set up just like the dating game on TV. Three stools, a wall, another stool, and a host. It all looks very professional for a skit idea that was hatched that morning at breakfast. They even have music. The host gets things going, introducing the bachelor and bachelorettes and getting the questions started. We answer in character, but we’re not very good and are cracking ourselves up. Michelle’s girly answers are hilarious, and the kids are dying every time Abby says ‘peaches and cream’. (We later learned that was because there was a song out at the time that uses the phrase as a euphemism. If only we’d known.) I didn’t think I was very funny, but as it’s not much of a stretch for me to be bitter and condescending I think I pulled it off okay. Still, I was shocked when the bachelor chose Bachelorette #2 – me.

I immediately started looking for the big counselor guy who was meant to be the date, but he was nowhere to be found. Then the head youth pastor’s wife came around the wall with flowers. Since we couldn’t find the guy, I decided to just take them and go around the wall to be this kid’s date. I remember thinking that the flowers were a strange touch, but with all the commotion I didn’t give it much thought. I also missed the collective gasp from the audience.

So. Music is playing. People are everywhere. I have flowers. I walk around the wall, and… time stops.

Aaron is there. He’s down on one knee. He’s got an open ring box in his hand. And 500 teenagers are screaming their heads off.

I froze.

Eventually, Aaron realized I wasn’t moving and kind of crawled over to me. He asked. I started crying. I think I nodded, but it’s all kind of a blur. Luckily he interpreted the crying as good and emotional rather than sad and embarrassed, and he stood up and went into hug mode. Where I am much more comfortable.

It was more perfect that I could have ever imagined. That camp had been a huge undertaking for us, and that it was successful was a really big deal. I was (and am still) thrilled that he chose to ask me to spend my life with him in the middle of it all. Plus, I’d always wanted to be proposed to in front of a lot of people, although I’m pretty sure I’d never mentioned it to him. To be on stage in front of the people we care about and the kids we’d worked so hard for was exactly as it should have been. I can’t believe it’s been five years today… it feels at the same time like it was yesterday and like it was a million years ago.