Danielle & I had our first class together at Cal State Channel Islands (CSUCI) in the fall of 2013. Though we didn't speak a single time to each other during the semester, I would later find out that I had apparently caught the eye of a certain tiny redhead. Fast forward to the spring 2014 semester at CSUCI, and we found ourselves having another class together! Once again, there was no real communication between us for the first month of the semester. Then one day after class, I went outside to walk across campus to my next class, and I heard somebody talking. It was Danielle, asking if I wanted to walk with her. I turned & looked behind me, assuming she was talking to someone else. Because in my mind, I figured there was no way she would be talking to me, especially considering that we had already had an entire semester of class together where she never spoke to me. She persisted, & each time I kept looking behind me to see who she must have been talking to. Eventually she said "I'M TALKING TO YOU", which I finally understood & went "sure!" We walked across campus together & chatted, which was nice, but that was basically it. We had a few other somewhat awkward interactions, like me asking her one day in class if she was still using a ruler, with her responding (louder than she intended) "NO". Or another time, when we had been using black paint outside, and I made a comment about how I got paint all over my jeans, leading her to "accidentally" check me out. Other than those few instances, nothing really happened until the end of the school year.

The last day of the semester, I walked alone in a hurry across campus, needing to work on a project in the computer lab before my last class. As I sat there working, Danielle walked into the room, and walked right up to me. She told me that she really liked my project that I presented in our class together, gave me a note, and said maybe we could hang out some time. As she left the room, I sat back down in front of the computer, and tried to play it cool before reading the note. The note said that she’d get nervous every time she tried to talk to me, but maybe we could be friends or something, & she had written her number down on the note! It’s worth noting by the way, that Danielle’s version of the story has her awkwardly throwing the note AT me (rather than handing it TO me) before making a hasty getaway. The truth is probably somewhere between our two versions. I tried not to get my hopes up too high, but the moment felt special. It felt like the beginning of a story I’d want to tell everyone for years to come. We texted back and forth a few times after that, then eventually met up for lunch one day. Danielle was predictably quiet our first date, but that didn’t matter, as we both felt the same way about each other pretty quickly, with each of us saying I love you to each other within 2 months of that first date.

Danielle and I have known almost since the beginning that we wanted to get married to each other. So the only question for me became: how to pop the question? The only aspect I knew all along was to include a note, since her giving me a note was the catalyst that began our entire relationship. Eventually, a plan came together. We had just celebrated 4 years of being together, and we were going to exchange gifts to each other a couple weeks late (by design on my part, since I didn’t want her to be expecting a proposal). We went to Natural Café for lunch, which is where we went on our first date together. We even wore the same outfits we wore that original day (once again, my doing). After lunch, we went to the park nearby, where we had gone to exactly one year after our first date. Unbeknownst to Danielle, I had my sister, Katie and my brother-in-law, Jason plant a go-pro in the tree overlooking the picnic table we were going to sit at, and then they were going to huddle in the hills nearby to take pictures of the whole thing. I also had a recording of the audio taken on my phone. The gift I gave her was a teapot, exactly like the one used on “The Office”, a show we both love. Inside the teapot were some goodies, and at the bottom, underneath the goodies, was a note I wrote her. Since Danielle’s original note to me read “Do you want to be friends or something?”, my note ended with “Do you want to spend the rest of your life with me or something?”. Somehow, she didn’t realize I was proposing at that moment, even as she finished reading it. Then I got down on one knee, holding the ring in my hand (I had hidden it in a pouch in my sock). When she saw me on one knee, her exact reaction was “Oh my god. SHIT!”, which was a reaction I never expected (but is now my favorite part of this experience without a doubt). After I officially asked her to marry me, she said “You’re so cute and handsome, YEAH I’ll marry you”.