May 8th - Our Un-anniversary!

May 8th is the day Dan proposed to me 17 years ago and, of course, I said yes. It was a very romantic night. Dan picked me up from dance class and we went to the Rustic Inn to pick up a bucket of garlic crabs. We were living in Bill & Evelyn’s apartment at the time and we had a picnic in the living room. I thought it was just a celebration of May 8th which was technically already our un-anniversary but Dan had more planned than I realized. Actually more than he realized too. You see that morning we went crabbing because we wanted to catch our own crabs. My Dad used to take us crabbing when we were young. We didn’t always catch many but it was fun and my mom always had a big bowl of linguini and clam sauce ready when we got home so we were good with or without the crabs. Well, we didn’t have much luck that morning either. As a matter of fact we didn’t catch any crabs at all. Now, we thought it must not have been crab season but it turns out it was the bait we used in the crab traps. We used chicken. We were told chicken would do the trick but we weren’t the brightest stars in the sky in our youthful days and when we went to Publix to get the chicken we thought we should take care of the bait and our lunch at the same time and we got fried chicken from the deli. Yes, not only was our bait cooked but breaded and fried. What crab would pass this up? What were we thinking?? Hence the reason we went to the Rustic Inn for crabs that evening. So while I was teaching my dance classes Dan went to a movie. Imagine that! And I guess at some point between dropping me off and picking me up he decided that this was the day. I just asked him what made him decide that was the day and he said, “I thought any girl who would buy fried chicken wings to try to catch crabs had to be a perfect catch. How could I find someone more perfect for me. I loved you and it was May 8th which just happened to fall on a “Windsday” that year. It was obviously meant to be.” So he went to his mom and asked her for her engagement ring, then went to the Hallmark store to get the precious moments statue and waited for the perfect moment after our picnic to ask. It’s been a while since I’ve seen the precious moments statue but I recall that it was of a little boy on his knee with a ring in a box and a little girl with a paper with yes and no check boxes and she had a pen. It was really cute! He gave it to me, then the ring and gave a very romantic speech which sadly neither of us really remember the details of. It‘s funny how you think you won‘t ever forget things like that because they are so important at the time but thankfully the emotional connection will always remain. Thank goodness for that! It comes in handy when you have those moments where you think I know there‘s a reason why I stayed with you this long so I guess I’ll hang around a little longer! Well, this year we skipped tradition a little and didn’t have crabs but we had fun swimming at my parent’s pool. We went after work. It was a beautiful evening. We swam and had a good time.