“I found them in the tank of the toilet. Better to be safe than sorry.”
Gavin chooses that moment to run into the room and I lift him up into my arms before I can ask Drew why this is the second time in a month he’s lost his keys in my toilet.
“Why is Uncle Drew washing dishes?” Gavin asks as he wrapped his arms around my neck.
“I’m not washing dishes. I’m washing my keys,” Drew explains with his back to us as he splashes in the water trying to retrieve them. He flings them out of the sink as he turns back around, splattering Gavin and I with suds.
“You don’t wash keys. That’s dumb,” Gavin replies seriously.
“Um, hello? You do too wash keys. Especially if they have your poop on them because they were in your toilet,” Drew replies as he shakes the excess suds off of his key ring.
“I don’t poop on keys! YOU poop on keys!” Gavin yells angrily. “I’m going to stick your head in the toilet!”
I probably should have intervened by now, but sometimes this is the highlight of my day. I unwind Gavin’s arms from my neck and set him back down.
“Okay, that’s enough. Gavin, go in your room and get your baseball hat. It’s almost time to pick up mommy and go to the game.”
Gavin takes off running but not before giving Drew a dirty look.
“Dude, that kid has anger issues. I hope you sleep with one eye open at night,” Drew mutters as he watches Gavin run off. He turns back to face me and crosses his arms in front of him. “So, you took my suggestion and went with the baseball game proposal. Nice. Good work.”
“As much as it pains me to say this, it was a really good idea. A guy at work got a bunch of free tickets to the Indian’s game today because his daughter works for the concierge desk at Progressive Field. According to this guy, they don’t allow you to just pay for a proposal to be put up on the scoreboard anymore. He gave me his daughter’s work number and she told me about this whole proposal package they have. So, for three hundred dollars I am now the proud owner of a Cleveland Indian’s Proposal Package,” I explain proudly.
“Will those three hundred dollars assure that they might actually win a game this year?” Drew asks.
I shake my head. “Probably not. But, it does get us moved to VIP seating in a loge after I propose, a five-by-seven glossy photo of the proposal as it was seen on the scoreboard, a dozen red roses, and a gift certificate to the Terrace Club restaurant right at the park so we can have dinner to celebrate,” I say with a smile as I grab my non-toilet-infested car keys off of the counter along with my wallet.
“If she says yes, you mean. Otherwise that’s just going to be the most depressing photo you will ever have hanging on your wall and a really uncomfortable dinner,” Drew supplies with a sad shake of his head.
“Thank you so much for that vote of confidence,” I deadpan.
And now the nerves are back. But I won’t let them get to me. I’ve been wracking my brain for weeks trying to come up with a unique and special way to propose to Claire, and when she mentioned casually that she’d never taken Gavin to an Indian’s game, I knew it would be the perfect setting. It will be in front of thousands of people and our son will be there to witness it. What could be better than that? And really, what woman wouldn’t love it?
~
During the sixth inning is when everything went to shit. Aside from the Drew-induced nervous stomach I suffered from during the first five innings, we are having a great time. Gavin is amazed by the ballpark and the Indians were up by seven. As my knee bounces up and down, and I force myself not to buy another hot dog to give myself something to do because eight ballpark hot dogs is where I draw the line, I try not to think about the fact that I never asked Claire’s father for her hand in marriage. That is something people still did nowadays, isn’t it? Would George be mad at me that I didn’t have a formal sit-down with him to discuss our upcoming nuptials and whether or not he approved? And now that I have said the word, “sit-down,” I am having flashes of George wearing a three-piece suit and fedora staring at me across a plate of half-eaten linguini while he steeples his fingers under his chin and then excuses himself to go to the bathroom so he can get the gun he hid behind the toilet and shoot me in the head.
“Leave the gun. Take the cannoli!”
A few people in the row in front of us turn around to look at me quizzically and I just shrug. They won’t judge me if they know my future father-in-law is a mobster who wants me dead for not going through the proper channels to marry his one and only daughter.
Claire is too busy arguing with Gavin about how a third bag of cotton candy will not, in fact, give him superpowers no matter what he saw on television so she has no idea about the minor freak-out I had going on. Not that I would talk to her about it anyway. This is supposed to be a surprise—a huge, life-changing surprise that could make or break our future. Or my kneecaps if George decides he really does hate me.
I continue my manic foot tapping as Jose Cabrera goes up to the plate and repeat the words I plan to say to Claire in my head.
I never thought I’d find you again…you are my heart and soul and my reason for living…every moment I spend with you is like-
Claire’s laughter breaks my concentration, and I glance over to see her pointing to the outfield and snickering with a few people sitting around her.
“Oh my God, would you look at that!” she exclaims.
I glance out beyond third base to see what has caught her interest. When I see what everyone else is staring at, my stomach plummets all the way to my toes and the eight hotdogs I just consumed threaten to make a reappearance in a totally unflattering way that won’t be near as much fun as dancing meat singing the Oscar Mayer wiener song.
There, televised on the jumbotron for all of Progressive Field to see, is a guy down on one knee somewhere by the first base line holding up a ring box to a hysterically sobbing woman with her hands over her mouth in shock. In big, jumbotron-sized, blinking red letters below their picture are the words, “Crystal, will you marry me? Love Rob!”
Claire snorts and shakes her head. “What a tool that guy is. How cheesy can you be? Proposing at a baseball game in front of tens of thousands of strangers and putting it up on the scoreboard? That’s got to be the most clichéd thing ever.
“REALLY ORIGINAL THERE, MORON!” she yells as everyone around us claps and cheers when the woman on the screen nods her head up and down emphatically and the pair embrace.
Oh sweet Jesus. Sweet mother fucking fuckery of fucks.
I am going to win the 'Tool of the Year' award if my proposal shows up on that screen in the next five minutes like it’s scheduled to. I don’t even know if there is a 'Tool of the Year' award. There must be. It’s probably a huge, gold penis trophy with an arrow pointing to it that reads, “This is you! A giant dick! Congratulations.” There’s probably even a 'Tool of the Year' book they print every year like that 'Darwin Awards' book that really has nothing to do with winning an esteemed award and everything to do with the fact that people are pointing and laughing because you died from trying to slow dance with an ostrich that would rather peck out your eyes than learn the Cha Cha.
Claire is going to peck out my eyes if I propose to her right now!
“Carter, are you okay? You look like you’re going to throw up. I told you no one should ever eat more than six hotdogs. That’s just asking for pig snout disease or whatever the hell they make those things out of,” Claire scolds as she looked me over worriedly.
“I ate a pig snout?!” Gavin asks elatedly. “What’s a pig snout?
Claire turns to the other side of her to try and explain to Gavin that hotdogs are, in fact, not made out of dogs, and I take that moment to jump up from my seat, mumbling something about throwing up before I race up the stairs to the concierge desk to cancel my Cleveland Indian’s Proposal Package before I die a slow, horrible eye-pecking death.