Valentine’s Day 2003

The best Sunday strip of all, even though it has some of the worst art. I drew it freehand, without penciling anything, on the floor at Derek Kirk Kim’s place, where we were hanging out after seeing the movie “Daredevil.” Jesse Hamm and Jen Wang were there too. I think after this we watched “Shaolin Soccer” on DVD. “Shaolin Soccer” is a much better movie than “Daredevil.”

What I didn’t draw was the part where, after making me turn around, Andrew stood there for a while doing nothing until I said, “What?” He got cold feet for a minute there.

I am really not very good at drawing people kissing.

So Andrew proposed to me on Friday, which was Valentine’s Day and the second anniversary of our first date. (We also got married on Valentine’s Day. It’s all pretty gross.) We didn’t tell anyone, although Andrew had told his dad ahead of time that he was planning to propose to me because his dad was heading off on a big trip to visit his family in Sicily. On Saturday night I saw “Daredevil,” drew this strip, watched “Shaolin Soccer,” went home, scanned the strip, and posted it. By then it was about five in the morning, so Andrew and I unplugged the phone before going to bed.

This was great, because on Sunday morning my mom saw the strip, flipped out, tried to call me, got an out-of-service signal, became convinced we’d eloped, and flipped out again. Which was awesome.

Anyway, that’s how we got engaged. And yes, I was wearing that hat.

16 thoughts on “Valentine’s Day 2003

  1. I think it’s so sweet that you decided to share this moment-of-moments with potentially every single human being on the planet. Though I suppose that isn’t particularly uncommon nowadays.

  2. This is a wonderful story; thank you for sharing it with us.

    In my case, Joan has always teased me that she was the first one to say “I love you”.  (I was gonna say it, but she beat me to it!)  So finally, after about the 20th time she kidded me about being afraid of “the L-word”, I replied, “Well, what about the M-word?”  Look on her face = priceless.

  3. Three things to be said here:

    1) Yes, this is the most adorable thing ever. I remember thinking so on my first read through the archives, too.

    2) After all your comments on getting body language for the cast right, this strip does prompt the question: Do you really have Dave’s body language?

    3) That’s a cool hat.

  4. current wife and I were dating for about a year. previous discussion had netted the “fact” that she liked living alone, wasn’t interested in marriage and so on. After 2 divorces (each of us) I could understand that so I didn’t pursue the idea. Anyway, on that day in July, she turned to me and said “were are we going with this” and I said, I didn’t have a clue because she didn’t want to get married, so that was out of the question. To which she replied with the classic words: “A woman can change her mind.”

    It’ll be 10 years this October.

  5. Heh. Mostly, I just like the fact that you told your mom through this comic strip. That *is* pretty awesome.

  6. Let’s not mince words: that is a downright marvellous hat. There on the highest perch it’s like a flat, puffy eagle, surveying the endless forests it rules.

  7. Oh my god SQUEE. I realize it’s weird to happy fangirl squee over real people but that was just so adorable!

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