Cindy and David

We first met at work. He was the 5th grade teacher and I was the 3rd grade teacher. In the beginning of the year, I was the new teacher that mostly kept to herself. However, one day we were both assigned to bus duty for our school’s after school program. Luckily on that faithful day, the bus arrived late, giving us more time to converse with each other. After the bus left, we ended up talking for 2 hours in front of my classroom. It was that moment we both knew we were going be a special person in each other’s lives.

Our first year dating we would walk around this park by my place often. We would always end up sitting by the tennis courts and just talk about whatever. There was one time I saw a tennis ball on the ground. I grabbed it and told him if I threw it in the garbage can from a certain point, he had to marry me. It was ridiculously far so we both knew I was joking. He agreed. However, I miraculously made it in! From that point on, we would randomly joke about (what we called) “the marriage ball”. Fast forward 4 years later…we had been talking about marriage often, but it seemed like he was not proposing anytime soon. In time, I accepted this and tried not to bring it up again. I had flown out for a bachelorette party and had this weird feeling he was going to propose when I got back. I for sure thought he would propose at our first date spot because it was so special to us. So when I asked him over the phone before he picked me up where we were going, he just said he would drop me off by my house. I was pretty upset and realized a proposal was definitely not happening. When he picked me up, he could clearly tell I wasn’t the happiest person, but ignored it. Before he dropped me off, he asked me if I wanted to go for walk since it was a nice day. We went to the park by my house near the tennis courts. We got out of the car and he asked me about that day I threw the marriage ball in the garbage can. He asked me to find the spot I threw the ball and if I could replicate that throw, then he really would marry me. I felt like he was joking with me so I just followed along. As I was standing at that spot, he told me to turn around and there he was… kneeling with the ring in the tennis ball that I threw 4 years ago! He went to go grab it after he dropped me off that day. He told me he knew he wanted to marry me and that he wanted to propose with it. Corny, cheesy, weird… but it was so perfect for me.