So is the 29th February every leap year the only chance women have a chance to propose to their men? Of course not. But if I leave it there then this will be my shortest ever post. I’ll leave you to decide whether that would be a good thing or not.
So where did the tradition for women to propose to their men on leap year come from? You might not be surprised to know that this was all started by those whacky medieval folk. Back then if you were the man on the receiving end of the big question it was pretty much illegal to say no. In fact in some European countries there were strict laws governing the punishments that would be handed out to any fella who was brave enough to say ‘nah’.
The strangest leap year proposal enforcement law I know of was the law that stated that if a man said ‘no ta love’ to his lady on the extra day the leap year gives us he had to buy her some gloves. Twelve pairs of gloves to be precise. These gloves were meant to allow the disappointed ladies to hide the fact they didn’t have a ring on their finger.
As you hopefully know I’m very much an equal opportunities type of person. I fully appreciate that women have as much potential for lousy proposals as men do. But the truth is that in doing my research for this blog post I couldn’t find any proof of women stuffing up proposals as badly as men. In fact I couldn’t find a single example.
But if you search the Interwebs for bad examples of men folk’s proposals then you’ll find an astonishing number of results. There’s the man who wrote ‘will you marry me’ on the windscreen of his girlfriend’s car, and was charged with criminal damage. There are a disappointing number of examples of men who thought hiding a ring in a burger would be a good idea. The best, or possibly worst proposal I found was a man who wrote ‘will you marry me’ in the snow, in perfect cursive, while urinating. I doubt his lady was impressed, but speaking as a fellow man I’m pretty impressed by his aim and control. On the plus side marrying this man would mean never having to constantly clean the toilet seat.
This all makes Homer proposing to Marge with an onion ring look quite romantic doesn’t it?