I witnessed a friend of mine propose to his girlfriend today…at one of the weekly meetings of The leading Edge. It was awesome.
We have this quirky tradition among Leading Edge slushpile readers (well, several actually). On the whiteboard, someone will write “Today is _____ day,” and then that person or someone else will fill in the blank with a different colored marker.
Well, when I showed up around 7:45, the message on the board was “Today is Multiple days,” with an asterisk that said “will be explained later.” Like most of the people there, I shrugged and didn’t think too much of it.
Well, around 8:15, Neal got up and said “I think it’s time to explain what I mean by ‘Multiple days.'” He then went up and started explaining how it’s harvest day, some other day, something else…
To be honest, we all kind of lost interest. Then he wrote down “the twist that no one saw coming,” and I think we cracked some kind of joke at it, but most of us still weren’t paying attention.
Then he wrote “Nyssa will you marry me?” and got down on his knees with a ring.
It was fantastically awesome. She screamed and went crazy, one of the girls got up with Neal’s phone and started taking pictures, and everyone clapped. Some of the editors came over to see what was going on, and when they saw it, their eyes just went wide. It was awesome.
Man, this science fiction and fantasy stuff at BYU leads to so many marriages. I can count at least half a dozen from Quark, and I’m sure there are a ton of others that were before my time. I think the main reason for it is that these sf&f clubs and events bring us together in a low-pressure environment where we can all just be ourselves and have fun. Friendships naturally lead to more-than-friendships when you don’t feel forced to date someone from the group every week (which is why Quark has just as many marriages, if not more, than most BYU singles wards).
Anyhow, congratulations Neal and Nyssa! I wish you both the best of luck! May all your children grow up to be just as geeky as you both!
I heard about that! That’s awesome. Wish I could have been there. I should try to come to LE next semester, once in a while.
I don’t think I know (or at least, don’t remember) Neal or Nyssa. But I’m happy for them anyway!
I think you are right about the low-pressure environment and having fun. My husband and I met at TLE, and I think our marriage was number 18 or 21 or somewhere around there to come out of TLE/Quark/LTUE, and that was twenty years ago.
My wife and I also met at TLE, but I haven’t heard of someone proposing during a meeting before.
Dan Wells said on Twitter that TLE is in danger of being defunded again, so I went looking on blogs and saw this post. Do you have any details on the defunding thing?
@Marny: That’s awesome! Do you know of any proposals that actually happened at TLE?
@Peter: The first I heard of TLE getting defunded was on facebook. Apparently, the editors learned of it after the fact, and only just recently; they haven’t told us slush-puppies anything about it yet. Looks like the craziness of the old days is about to come back.