Lab Kat

Okay, someone please explain to me the weirdness that is proposing in public?  I don’t mean, the guy (or girl… we are all equal kittens here) takes his/her significant other to dinner, gets appropriately tipsy and pops the question over a pricey dessert.

I mean, pledging your troth on the football stadium’s jumbo-tron, through sky writing or, as I witnessed a few nights ago, at a frickin’ comedy club. Because nothing says sweet memories like approximately 150 drunk people screaming “SAY YES, DAMNIT” as a white-hot spotlight reveals that you, indeed, should have picked a less sheer fabric to wear that evening.

And, not just any comedy club, but one of those improv places that serves as a mating call to all loud, drunk, college-aged, self-obsessed memes within a 50 miles radius. Like the waste of skin sitting behind us who continually burped loudly into the back of my head and, when the emcee would ask for us to yell out a hobby, would scream “Masturbation!”  Yeah, ladies, he’s free.

I didn’t want to go, to be honest. If there is one thing I hate worse than microphones, it’s a stage. Being on a stage with a microphone. Being on a stage with a microphone, a spotlight and a group of people staring at you. Yeah, just stab me now. Repeatedly. But, JS’s best friend DT kept insisting it would be fun and we looked way too normal to be picked on.

I’ll pause for the laughter to die down.

The guys on stage were pretty good and, true to DT’s word, no spotlight suddenly appeared on the back of my head, followed by the emcee asking “And, what’s your name?”  Which would have been followed by “My name is Stick that Mic up your Ass, motherfucker.”

So. We’re sailing along through this skit where the guys are acting out a scene from “Grease” through nonsensical language (improv humor is ALL about being there) and the groom-to-be had volunteered to be in the skit. Said gentlemen also “volunteered” his cute bride-to-be. Volunteered meaning he just grabbed her arm and dragged her onstage. Obviously, she only weighed 90 pounds. If it was me, I would have dug in my heels so hard, JS would have had to have his shoulder replaced.

So, again. Cute, soon-to-be engaged couple are onstage. She, while slightly tipsy, has enough sense to realize her darling little outfit wasn’t made for the stage and keeps pressing the fabric to her sides, as if that’s going to make the sheer material any thicker. The emcee would call out the guys’ names randomly to say the lines, so he says “And, I think Brian has the next line.”  Brian then pulls the ring out of his pocket, gets down one knee and asks… erm… whatsername to marry him. Just a small intimate moment with a theater full of rowdy, drunk friends. Rowdy, drunk and stupid friends I might add, as some freak in the audience didn’t know that “Free Bird” wasn’t a Led Zepplin song.

She said yes and broke down into hysterical tears. They hugged. We cheered. The emcee then politely herded them offstage and out of the room for “a private moment and a free drink.”

Private? Excuse me? Privacy walked out the door several minutes ago when the aforementioned gentleman sitting behind me yelled “OH, FUCK YEAH, MAN! MARRY THAT PIECE OF ASS!”

I’m not kidding.

I just don’t get it. I really don’t. Maybe it’s because mine and JS’s rather laid-back approach to entire our relationship culminated in him saying “You know, we’ve lived together for two years. Should we think about getting married?” I replied, “Yeah, sure” and a couple of months later, we were playing Blackjack in Vegas after having just been wed at A Little White Chapel. In under an hour.

I never cared for a ring or the whole big to-do surrounding Being Engaged. But, to each his or her own and, for some, it is very important. Like my youngest sister. Who is officially Engaged. That’s with with a capital E, people. Trust me, it’s big. Thank goodness I’m only a bridesmaid this time and have escaped any wedding responsibilities except buying a dress and showing up. Because this is going to be the mother of all weddings. Fuck Celine Dion and her weird headgear. This will be epic. You have been warned.

But, I digress.

Proposals… shouldn’t such a life-changing question have a little more… I dunno… PRIVACY to it? Unless you’re Britney Spears or Donald Trump, marriage is an important commitment that we real people don’t take lightly. I would think you’d want to start it with more poignancy than your drunken best friend using her camera phone to video you standing awkwardly on improv stage, thereby ensuring the whole thing will end up on Youtube later that night.

There are just some things that don’t need an audience. Marriage proposal. Giving birth. Trying on a swimsuit.

Okay, so some things don’t need a mirror either.

*bimbles off*