a memorable proposal

There's been a story on TV for the last couple of days about a young man who planned to propose to his girlfriend at a baseball game. Unhappily he dropped the ring. After some searching by the couple and many people around them, the ring was discovered caught in the cuff of her jeans. Talk about a lucky catch.  This made me think about the many extreme proposals you hear about these days.  It seems to be the goal of romantic young men to make the proposal as public as possible which sounds nice but what if she says no?  What if she says "I'll think about it." or "This ring is too small." Then I got to thinking about my own proposal (yes I can remember that long ago). As I remember it was very private.  We were sitting on the sofa in a friend's house in Teaneck, New Jersey, after everyone else had gone to bed. He definitely did not get down on one knee.  What he did was pull out his billfold and show me that he had $500 tucked away to buy an engagement ring for me. That was a lot of money back then, at least to us. Then he pulled out a brochure from a jeweler and showed me the design he liked. I liked it too. That was during Thanksgiving weekend in 1967. On December 23 he gave me the finished ring. He gave it to me on the 23rd because he didn't want it to be considered a Christmas gift. I'm pretty sure it was that evening that we set our wedding date.  The funny thing is I don't really remember him ever saying "Will you..." or me saying "Yes." I think, as in so many situations in our marriage we just sort of comfortably settled into the situation. Not too romantic maybe (although it seemed so to me) but he never lost the ring.