"Yes"

::mood:: sage-like
::movie:: Ever After - 1998, Drew Barrymore, Dougray Scott

I would like to offer a word to the wise, my two cents to all ladies, on behalf of my fellow gentlemen everywhere. Consider it my doing everyone a favor.

First, some background. So, I'm watching Ever After with my sisters.* When we come to one of the most romantic scenes in the whole fairy tale: the part where Prince "Charming" Henry kneels down before the love of his life, Danielle, and says,

"I kneel before you not as a prince, but as a man in love... But I would
feel like a king if you, Danielle De Barberac, would be my wife."

At which point, our fair maiden hides her face in her hands, spontaneously bursts into tears, then momentarily looks up with incredible joy in her eyes only to begin laughing, and proceeds to give her suitor a hug and prolonged kiss.

Which prompted my little bit of advice:
Ladies, when your Prince Charming finally works up the courage to ask you the much-anticipated question, "Will you marry me?", please, for my benefit, and on behalf of all my fellow knights-in-shining-armor, pleeease, somewhere in your response, simply include the word "yes".

It's a very small word. It's not hard to say; only one syllable. It's not really that much to ask! Only, if you do this one little thing, nothing will be left to question. There will be no lingering doubts, or second guesses as to what exactly your crying/laughing/hugging/kissing response means.

Of course, you may think you are accurately expressing what you mean, and, if you're truly lucky, your man may just understand exactly what all this does mean. But, I guarantee you, and you may just have to take my word for this, but more than 85% of proposing suitors will be left in miserable agony, tearing us to shreds, slicing and dicing our hearts, and wracking our brains trying to remember if you actually had said, "yes", and we didn't hear it the first time, or if we need to ask again just to get a secondary positive response, or if we do ask again, how to do it, and how it will be received, and if, by some wildly tragic chance, we really weren't reading you all along and now we've just gone and made the biggest mistake of our lives because now you had to say "no" and feel like we've just ruined everything, or is everything just chance? You get the idea.

Perhaps this really only lasts for a split second until she looks back up and him and says, "Of course, love, where ever you are, I am forever beside you. I would die if I ever had to leave you. My love is only yours. Oh, I love you so much!", which, of course would tend to remove all traces of the aforementioned doubt. But regardless, those few nano-seconds, no matter how brief, will already have stretched on for him as the eternity of facing the Sahara on foot.

With that simple request, I leave you. I simply want to let you know the other side of the story, and hopefully, improve my chances of hearing that beloved word with no additional pain or torture. Partially, I simply seek to appease karma here, but I'll save that explanation for another day. For now, au revoir.

*Disclaimer: I have nothing against the scene in the movie. It was brilliant. Well acted. Well scripted. Well produced. I enjoy watching it; it's a great fairy tale of a movie.