Are you engaged?

When I got engaged 10 years ago, my fiance followed my ecstatic "Yes!" with a decided, "But you can't tell anyone yet."

"Um, excuse me? What? I'm engaged!" I'd waited my whole life to make that declaration and now that it was true I couldn't tell anyone? Okay Ann calm down, he might have a valid reason. "Why?" I ask. My sweet and thoughtful fiance explained that he wanted our parents to be the first to know and he didn't want to tell them over the phone. He wouldn't be home from college until that weekend. (2 days away) Hence the need to wait to reveal the big news.

I agreed and faithfully promised to not tell anyone. The next morning I was at work in the Discover Card collections department. When we called a customer and didn't reach them there were a series of questions we were to ask when leaving a message, such as: when will they be back, and is there a better number for them? The last question I always asked after leaving a message was, "And who am I leaving a message with?"

Well on my first call of the day, I sat bouncing in my seat, near to exploding with my once in a lifetime news. I couldn't reach the customer and so began the process of leaving a message. I systematically worked my way through the required questions, left a message, and stated my standard follow up question which came out a bit different then expected.

"And who am I getting married to?"

I slapped my hand over my mouth as the heads of all of my cubicle coworkers popped up and the woman on the other end of the phone chuckled and said, "Newly engaged are you?"

"Yes." I sheepishly replied.

"There's nothing like it," she came back with.

And isn't she right? There's nothing like being engaged.