Simple Odds

The sun blazes down on the blacktop outside your garage. You stand with your hand in a lowered salute to cover your eyes from the brightness of the rays. You turn your head to survey the cramped hatch of your SUV. A checklist of the contents secured under a clip board’s claw. You feel like Santa checking the list not only once but twice. No one wants to be without a key element when executing a marriage proposal. 

When you began planning to ask Anne to be your missus months ago, the plan was almost self-written. The month had to be June. The date had to be the fourteenth or fifteenth. The sixth anniversary of a one-night-stand turned committed relationship somewhere between eleven in the evening and four o’clock the next morning. 

Those were the only definites.

The rest of the proposal would be heartfelt and classy with the obligatory knee bend. Nothing that would require multiple trips to stores you don’t shop at or questions to people you barely know.

You blame the meteorologist on the cable weather station. Two weeks ago, he predicted graupel in the middle of June.

“What the hell is graupel?” you thought as you Googled the word. Leave it to fate to produce unknown frozen precipitation so near the start of summer.   

And even though his forecast was wrong, you realized you better keep more track of the outdoors.

The weather in the Great Lakes region in June can be as unpredictable as the weather, well, in the Great Lakes region in December. Unexpected winds blowing in off the lake and the entire fleet of weather forecasters’ predictions are null, even if you live fifty miles from the fresh water shoreline.

You plan a grand gesture in a row boat in the middle of a land-locked lake with shorelines full of flowers and greenery. Anne would want selfies and you are determined to give her the photo-ready background to compliment her wide-eyed amazement as she stares at the princess cut diamond ring surrounded by opals, her birthstone.

Reaching in to adjust the parkas, you scratch your forearm against the extra think, wide-brimmed umbrella with reinforced points that fits nicely between the his and hers rain boots.

You did call your mom to ask her opinion.

“I told you Jack that an outdoor proposal before July first is asking for weather chaos,” she reminded. “I’ll check what the Farmer’s Almanac says.”

Words written a year earlier about weather patterns were a story and not a prediction. You needed AI and satellites for your verifications.

You smell something inside the hatch. The lid on the bug spray fell off and drips of the repellent soak a spot on the carpet. The heavy mosquito warning push notification that flashes on your phone everyday warrants the product, but not its defective lid.

You have not packed sunscreen because both the conservative and aggressive forecasters warned of the remnants of a tropical depression stalling over a two-hundred-mile radius from your townhouse. You have a tube of sun block inside. It will help keep the bug spray upright.

You pull up channel seven’s app for the afternoon update of the morning update. Clear skies through late evening.

Ten days ago, a drunk buddy of a buddy of yours told you over pool and drinks about his go to person for weather correctness.

“Schilling on seven is the woman. Most accurate forecaster in the area. Been calling the precip for nearly twenty years.”

“How would you know?” you asked cautionary.

“Rated best of the best in the local newspaper. Got nearly seventy percent of the readers’ votes.”

Distracted, your buddy responded, “Yeah, I read that article too. One-hundred percent chance of the two ball in the side pocket.”

Schilling must have won her award because of her personality and not her accuracy. You measured her skill for four days and realized she was more accurate if you followed the exact opposite forecast she gave. 

Except on the one ninety-degree day. Convinced the temperature would not rise out of the sixties because of a strong wind over cooled lake waters, you wore a black long sleeve shirt and sweater to work on a hot and humid day with no breeze.

You needed more accuracy for your proposal plan to work. Excel’s functions proved a great way to track the forecasts of three live people and four weather apps.

You unintentionally learned weather lingo and accidentally speckled it into conversations with Anne.

She noticed your astute attention to meteorological terms. Isobars to describe wind damage to a favorite winery in Napa.

“Weather anomaly,” you explained.

A drop in barometric pressure as the cause of your headache.

“Should have had another half day before my sinuses felt the approaching cold front.”

Anne wondered why you had become so concerned with the accuracy of weather forecasts.

“Perfect is overdone,” she told you standing in the rain without an umbrella at a minor league baseball game. She laughed. You fumed. The umbrellas remained in the car thanks to CNN’s weather ticker.

You adjust the two camping store ponchos and wading pants on top of the other gear and try to create a clear sightline from the front to the back of the car. If the stadiums seats folded one more time, all of the gear would have been hidden if Anne looked behind her. The seats had to stay. They could tolerate wind gusts up to fifty and if you end up docked by rough waters, you want to at least be able to sit next to your future wife and gaze at the lake.

You guessed at the size of her swimsuit. The azure one shoulder with ruffles on the strap and matching cover up look wider than you remembered. You couldn’t ask her for the size. Six days out the news alerted the public to a record heat wave this week. Heat might make her sweat and her fingers swell. A cool dip before a boat ride to dry off would eliminate the problem.

You look again at you list of supplies hoping you covered every major weather occurrence that might happen in the next six hours.

The push message pings.

“Sunny and pleasant, high of eighty-seven. Enjoy the rays.”

You rev the SUV’s engine and feel your masculinity return. You’ll share the proposal planning story with her on your first anniversary. The story before a celebratory bedtime. You swell with the expectation.

You stop at a red light three miles from Anne’s apartment. The southern wind gushes through the car’s open windows and sun roof. You inhale and wait to smell your first scents of summer. Instead you smell something cold that resonates at the back of your nose and dampens its membranes until they are heavy.

Rain.

Sirens deafen you and the motorists around you. Not police sirens, but tornado sirens.

You check the radar on a newly installed weather app and all you see is red – dangerous storms. The radar-indicated rotation is moving directly towards the lake with the row boat and the stunning shoreline.

Your phone pings. You expect the details of the tornado’s formation.

“Dry weather through tomorrow night.”

You press hard on the app’s icon nearly cracking the phone’s screen before you press the delete button. It along with all of its inaccurate facts are gone.

You find a coin in the cup holder and flip it.

Heads, the proposal’s a go at the lake. Tails, you propose at her front door.

It’s tails six times in a row.