EDIT: Bob And Maureen's Virus Courtyard Proposal

Love Conquers All...including the Quarantine

Maureen is Irish. Bob is Italian.

Bob has relatives in Northern Italy, currently the most deadly and pervasive stop on the Covid-19 World Tour. “Lost two of my family members. Two, just this last week.”

Bob and I have known each other for years. And Bob is one hell of a romantic.

“Just don’t tell them I’m engaged until after I propose. Just don’t, OK?”

Bob’s engaged. Dropped that news on me about ten minutes ago. I get to tell you what just happened. But let me set this up first.

Bob said:

“I talk to Maureen through Skype.”

“We’re OK. I’m still working. Still on my routes.” (Bob works for FedEx.)

“But when Maureen started working those twelve hour shifts at the hospital (Maureen is an ICU nurse) one right after another, I knew something was going to snap. She got really tired. Sore throat, fever, all that crap.”

Sure as hell, she tested positive."

“So, she lives in a condo downtown. Got a big courtyard. From the front of this place, her window is at about 11 o’clock on the building, two stories up.”

Bob and Maureen have known each other for years, but they just started seeing a different color of love in each other’s eyes about six months ago. And Bob told me that he “isn’t going to let her go.”

“I decided I’d go for this jump in our hearts about two months ago and then, bam, this happened. So I took a page out of the book of those folks in Italy, and had my friend video tape it.”

Bob went to the courtyard, and yelled her name. “Maurrreeeeeen” over and over. About five minutes passed. She finally came to the window. Bob yelled, “Open it up!!! I’ve got to talk to you about something really important.” Maureen with kleenex in hand, wearing her bathrobe, pried open the window. “Hi,” she said, weakly waving her kleenex. She was smiling.

I’ll let Bob tell you this part:

“God, I was nervous.

And I had to do this quickly because I have a ton of deliveries. Anyway, I yelled, “Hey, I’ve got something here, but I have to sing it to you. And I sang, “ Ti amo, vuoi sposarmi.” It sounded like, “I am I, Don Quixote” from Man of La Mancha. Just came out that way.”

“I kept singing this, maybe about four times, and she said, “Bob! Stop! What are you saying?” By this time, a few people came to the windows. Didn’t want to make a show, but I understood. Some FedEx guy is singing at a woman in Italian. Like that’s not going to draw a crowd? What the hell was I thinking?”

“Anyway, I stopped singing. I was out of breath. Nervous, winded from singing. I said, “It’s Italian.” She said, “Yes, I gathered that. What does it mean?”

“I said, “It means, “I love you. Please marry me.”

“She put both of her hands against her mouth and I could tell she started to cry. At least ten seconds passed and, being the romantic that I am, I said, “Could you let me know? I’ve got a hundred deliveries and I really have to pee.”

She started to laugh. She nodded her head and said, “Yes.”

The people in the windows, ones who could, opened them and applauded. They yelled, “Congratulations” and “Way to Go!” That was nice. One guys said, “Hey, if you have to pee, you can come up here!”

“I can’t hug her. She won’t let me. The second she allows it...man, that’ll be the best hug I’ll ever get.”

There was a silence on the other end of the phone. Bob started to cry a little. He caught himself and said, “I told her I’d be back. We’d Skype, but I wanted to see her in the window. The last thing I said to her as I was leaving was this: