The weekend of Thanksgiving lots of friends were out of town home for the holiday. My good guy friend Adam from Miami of Ohio invited me to Burwood Tap where he was with some Redhawks and also several Loyola Ramblers. After a night of lots of popcorn, pool, & exchanging numbers, the tall dark and handsome John F. Lanctot called me a few days later and asked me to go get a drink! I remember meeting him after my DePaul grad school class at Marquee Lounge - he was so cute standing on the corner of Halsted and Armitage in his Blackhawks hat and that giddy feeling hasn't gone away since. By Christmas, he had survived our annual Cousin's Party and a Bulls game with my parents, and I'd met his entire cousin crew at Glascott's. After completing the Christmas party circuit I realized we both fit perfectly into each others families. I knew then he was my person.

On the morning of December 2nd, 2017, I knew I was going to ask Carolyn to marry me. I hatched the perfect plan. Of course, my perfect plan was foiled almost immediately. It's 2pm and I have just lost the final match of 3 unexpected court tennis matches and missed our 12pm lunch agreement & she's watched a mediocre rendition of a medieval sport for nearly 2 full hours. I hustled into the lounge and we have a lovely lunch. My plan was to walk to the bridge in Lincoln Park and while looking at the skyline surprise Carolyn with a romantic proposal. I was found out very quickly, as Carolyn was curious as to why after playing 3 hours of tennis, I was so interested in walking home through the park. I just was, ok!? As we were approaching the Lincoln Park bridge, I noticed that there was a full-scale wedding photo shoot happening, which led me to panic a bit and try to quickly audible to a new spot. Serendipitously, roughly 20 feet ahead of our path was a jetty into the pond that shared the same view as the bridge. I asked Carolyn to come to the jetty with me, being Carolyn, she immediately knew what was happening. I began to recite the speech I had so specifically wanted to get correct and finished with “Carolyn, will you marry me?” and as every young boy dreams Carolyn answered “Well, are you going to get on a knee?” Being a reasonable and socially well-adjusted human being, I responded, “It depends, are you going to say yes?”. Luckily for me, despite my attitude, she did.