The Perfect Proposal

Many of you have probably seen Isaac Lamb's lip dub proposal by now. If not, here's a link to the video. I guarantee it'll put a smile on your face.

http://youtu.be/BKtNtsrs6go

I'm extremely excited about this video because Isaac is a fellow Jesuit High School alum. He graduated a couple years ahead of me, so I only knew him from afar. Seeing this video, however, brought me right back to high school.

Freshman year, Spring 1997. My girlfriends and I were sitting at a round table in the cafeteria. We were no doubt gossiping about the freshmen in our class who had been asked to the junior/senior prom aka the popular kids aka not us. All the sudden, we hear a chorus of male voices...

"You never close your eyes anymore when I kiss your lips.
And there's no tenderness like before in your fingertips.
You're trying hard not to show it, baby.
But baby, baby I know it.

You've lost that lovin feelin
Whoa that lovin feelin
You've lost that lovin feelin
Now it's gone, gone, gone, whoa-oh-oh-oh"

By now, we and the rest of the cafeteria had located the origin of the song. Alex, the male half of one of those "staple" high school couples, had gathered his buddies to serenade his girlfriend, Adrienne, in the middle of the cafeteria. After the boys finished their tune, Alex got on one knee and asked, "Adrienne, will you go to prom with me?" The whole prepubescent audience waited with baited breath. "Of course!" Applause erupt!

Shortly after, the girls and the boys were called into an assembly. The boys were in one gym, the girls were in another. I don't remember what the girls' assembly was about, but I definitely remember what the boys were told. The administration instructed the boys that they were forbidded to ask girls to dances in a public manner because it was sexual harassment. In other words, by asking a girl out in public forces her to say 'yes' and is therefore against the law.

In the words of Amy Poehler and Seth Meyers, really?

Luckily, as is the case when "the man" tells students that they can't do something, the boys at my school completely rebelled. It became their mission to ask girls to dances in the most creative, over-the-top way as possible without getting caught by adminstration. And let me tell you, this led to some of my favorite memories in high school.

High school is a time when teenagers go through the most dramatic changes in an extremely short period of time. Changing hormones, changing bodies, changing goals and aspirations, changing morals. I absolutely believe that it's the role of our educators to help gently guide teenagers through this transition. Key word there: gently. Yes, it's important to teach our young men how to treat a lady. But is it not also a life skill to teach young women how to say, "no" despite the circumstances under which they were asked? Part of what I learned in high school was how to interact with boys - a skill that has not only helped me socially, but also professionally.

I applaud you Isaac, for taking the time to show the world how much your fiance means to you!