Like this:

Now for the engagement story…

The abridged, romantic version goes like this:

When Osamu and I first started dating, we made a time capsule together and buried it near our college dorm. Whenever we returned to Boston, we would dig it up and add things to it. Five years later, I returned there for my 5-year college reunion. At the end of my reunion, Osamu picked me up (we were about to drive cross-country to move to LA). Before we left, we went to dig up the time capsule. As I gleefully dug in the dirt with a stick, I was surprised to discover that there was a new time capsule in the place of the original! It was clear, and I could see that it was filled with our old letters to each other, some photos, and a one-line rhyme that we made up about growing old and gray together. He got down on one knee and proposed!

Osamu unearths the time capsule one year later

The unabridged, potentially disturbing (but actually funny if you know us) version goes like this:

When Osamu and I first started dating, my roommates and I had a mouse in our dorm room. Since we were giant babies about it, Osamu set up a mouse trap for us. Coming home one day, I sensed death in the room — specifically, coming from the dark corner below the coffee table where the mouse trap was lurking. One of my roommates and I peered under the table and saw the shadowy figure of a mouse corpse. We freaked out and Osamu came over to dispose of it. I felt that the mouse deserved a name and a proper burial. We named it Baby G (after our former 4th roommate Gita, who hung out in our room on occasion sort of like the mouse). We found a plastic Lysol wipes container to hold Baby G. Osamu and I wrote a funeral note and buried it with a small ceremony. Don’t ask why we kept digging it up. Maybe because I’m a little bizarre and he’s interested in pathology, I’m not sure. With this in mind, you can see why I wasn’t expecting a proposal when we went to dig up Baby G. But the Lysol wipes container had been replaced with an actual time capsule: a thick glass cylinder that Osamu got from his science lab. Although it was 100 degrees outside and I was covered in dirt, it was a perfect proposal: it was goofy like us and not at all corny. And it tied together our past, present, and future.

Not for the faint-hearted: Baby G one year later

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