By ANY DAY IN LA BY HEIDI MANTEUFFEL
A man proposed to me last night on the beach. You would think it was romantic, but I don’t even know his name.
I was walking off a long day of work on the sidewalk near the Santa Monica Pier. One step in front of the other, my thoughts about art work transmittals were dissolving into the skyline — the very same skyline under which a man in a soccer-mom van wanted me to share the rest of his life.
As he pulled up in the parking lot beside me, he popped his smiling, baseball-capped, T-shirted self out the window. Little did I know he would pop the question as well.
“I’m looking for a wife,” he told me. A tourist I figured, from my dad’s generation, thinking of a clever way to say he can’t find his wife. There are other phrases in this vein like “Mr. Robinson is my dad” and “Call me Jim but don’t call me late for supper.”
Still the question was sort of odd, as I don’t remember being told where she ran off to.
“You’re looking for your wife?” I asked. How was I supposed to help him?
“No,” he smiled. “I’m looking for a wife.”
He continued to tell me, “I have an engagement present in my car. I wanted to know if you wanted to get married.”
Without consulting my brain first, I responded with, “Oh no, I’m good, thanks,” as if he was trying to offer me a cupcake. I kept walking.
And with that, he drove the green chariot/van off into the sunset.
No one has made it that easy for me before. A proposal also has never been so bizarre. Maybe I was supposed to be lured like a kid with the lollipop-in-the-van scam. Hmmm, engagement present. Maybe he honestly had visions of true love. Or maybe he just bought a really good gift he wanted to share with someone … for the rest of her life.
I think this encounter gives me the leverage to say there are some screwed up people here in LA. I can’t say that his intentions were bad — it never hurts to be flattered. But usually you at least date for a bit, meet the parents, or, I don’t know, learn her first name. It always helps when you stare into another’s eyes to have something to call them by. Judy, Beatrice, anything.
As I headed back towards my car at the end of my walk, another man yelled at me, “Hey this is the sixth time you passed by here!” I had two other strangers earlier start up a conversation with me, and so I started to wonder if someone stuck a sign to me that said “Talk to me — please, please talk to me.” Wearily I responded, “Try second.”
He also had a gift for me. “Do you want a K-Mart gift certificate?” he asked. I thought he was perhaps making fun of my clothes since I don’t know of a K- Mart anywhere in LA. So I responded wryly, “Why, do you have one in your pocket?” He searched himself vigorously and got visibly frustrated. “I did …”
With that I walked away. I had no energy left to figure out the motives of gift giving from these LA beachgoers. It’s nice to be offered presents, but even nicer when you have a friendship longer than two minutes with which to put your wedding gift and potential K-Mart garden tools into context. (Heidi)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on May 3, 2005. Read the original PDF.