A Priori Engagement

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman Podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

This week, a priori engagement.

Tanya brings the case against her husband, Thomas.

During the height of the coronavirus pandemic, Tanya read a news story about wedding venues being booked years in advance.

She asked Thomas if he wanted to get married.

He said yes.

Thomas interpreted that as a proposal.

But Tanya says it was just a question about logistics.

Who's right, who's wrong, only one can decide.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman enters the courtroom and presents an obscure cultural reference.

25 people died shoveling snow.

Have that done by someone you hate.

166 looters arrested, but wait.

I spent the blizzard of 78.

on a commune in northern Vermont with all the Isaac Asmov anybody could want.

Bailiff Jesse Thorne, please swear the litigant's in.

Tanya and Thomas, please rise and raise your right hands.

Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

So help you, God, or whatever.

I do.

I do.

Do you swear to abide by Judge John Hodgman's ruling, despite the fact that he has no wedding venues booked?

I do.

Judge Hodgman, you may proceed.

Actually, Jesse, I booked none this year because last year I booked all of the wedding venues.

Really?

All at once?

Yeah, all at once.

I just figured, let's be safe.

Even though I'm married, you never know.

I had a kind of a hoarding mentality when it came to putting down deposits on wedding venues and caterers, and it did not work out well.

So you were to wedding venues as other people were to dried black beans?

Dried black beans.

As John Kimball of Election Profit Makers was to catchy URLs in the early 2000s.

Yes.

I hoarded them, and let's just say that boom turned to a bust.

And now I've got several shipping containers full of canopes.

But that's neither here nor there.

Tanya Thomas, you may be seated for an immediate summary of judgment in one of your favors.

Can either of you name,

I'll be direct about this, the song that I was quoting as I'd entered the courtroom.

And if you can name the song, can you tell me what it has to do with the topic at hand, which is your ambiguous marriage proposal?

Tanya, why don't you guess first?

I only came in with one idea.

and uh thank you that was for doing the homework no problem that was jonathan swift's a modest proposal jonathan swift's a modest proposal isn't that one where he advises the eating of children

yes but ironically and not at all to be taken seriously much like my proposal was not meant to be taken seriously it wasn't a proposal at all Your proposal was satirical?

It wasn't a proposal at all.

Much like this was a bad proposal by Jonathan Swift.

I know it's not a song.

No, I appreciate that.

Hey, look, I wish I had thought of Jonathan Swift.

That's a good one

because I could not think of one for a long time today.

A lot of productivity was lost in trying to come up with a cultural reference, as you will find out.

But we'll go ahead and enter that into the guest book.

What about you, Thomas?

What's your guess?

Man, a song, proposal.

This is a song, but if you had, if you had something pre-loaded,

I didn't do my homework.

So

I saw that.

I came unprepared for that one.

So I can't think of any songs.

Can you think of any song?

Any song?

The Rolling Stones Paint It Black just popped in my head.

I see a red door and I want it painted black.

A modest proposal by Mick Jagger.

Well, it's interesting that you should suggest.

All the guesses are wrong, by the way.

But Thomas, let me give you both a little bit of a hint.

If instead of a red door, what if I said, I see a red barn and it's one of the most painted buildings in America?

That is to say, not repainted, but depicted in paintings.

Would you be thinking of the barn that is known as motif number one, the fishing shack on the pier in Rockport, Massachusetts?

Probably you would be.

Yeah, that's exactly what popped into my head.

Right.

So where do we go from there?

Which famous red fishing shack?

Now, obviously, that's A to B, but as they say in improv, we want to go A to C.

Which famous red fishing shack, which is the subject of many, many both folk and professional oil paintings in Rockport, Massachusetts, was destroyed during the Blizzard of 1978?

Would it be motif number one, the one that I was just talking about?

You're right.

That's correct.

And was the Blizzard of 78 the name of the song that I was referencing as I entered the courtroom?

Yes, it was.

It's the song Blizzard of 78 by the Magnetic Fields.

That was my second guess.

One of Stephen Merritt's 50 songs in his album from 2017, 50 Song Memoir.

He wrote a song for every year that he was alive, including the very famous Blizzard of 1978, which lay waste to all of New England, which is, of course, a region of Southeast Canada that everyone knows very well.

And after the Blizzard of 1978, the people of Rockport and the people of Massachusetts rebuilt that famous red fishing shack.

And what film was shot in Rockport, indeed, in that or around that fishing shack?

I don't know for sure because I didn't see it.

With Rockport then doubling as Sitka Alaska.

What film?

2009 romantic comedy film with Ryan Reynolds and

Sandra Bullock film.

Oh, I know this one.

What is it, Tanya?

Was it an accidental proposal?

No, it was just the proposal.

Oh, the proposal.

A modest proposal by Jonathan Swift would have been much better.

But then, I guess, Tanya, if I quoted a modest proposal, you would have guessed it.

And then we would not get to hear this wonderful case.

So now we do get to hear it.

So, who seeks justice before me in this fake courtroom?

I do.

Tanya, what is the justice you seek?

What is the nature of this dispute?

So,

in 2020, I was reading this newspaper article.

I was sitting on the couch in my pajamas, reading this newspaper article.

This is 2021.

2021.

And I have a horrible memory.

Thank you, fact checker Thomas.

Now, nothing you say seems reliable to me, Tanya.

This is why you never put yourself on the stand.

This bode's ill.

The year is 2021.

Tanya is in her pajamas reading a newspaper article on the subject of...

John Hodgman booking every wedding venue in the United States.

Exactly.

And it was, it sounded catastrophic.

It was like, things are booking up years in advance.

There's no places available.

If you are thinking about getting married, you should be on top of this.

Now, this is something that really happened.

I did not actually book all these wedding venues, but there was a real run on wedding venues in 2021.

Exactly.

And there were multiple articles on this.

Multiple articles.

You were reading in your pajamas.

Yes.

And I turned to Thomas.

to ask him if we were on the same page.

I said, do you want to get married?

And he said, yes.

And so then I was like, okay, since we both agreed that at some point we want to get married, maybe I should start looking at wedding venues.

So quick question.

Did you know Thomas at the time?

Or was he like next to you in a Starbucks or something?

I did know Thomas at the time.

We had been.

I knew it was 2021 because we bought a house together in October of 2020.

And you were then and are now romantic partners?

Yep.

Yes.

Are you married now, may I ask?

We are.

Okay.

So you decided to cohabitate in where?

It says here, Denver?

Yep.

We're in Denver.

Denver, Colorado, mile-high city.

So you bought a home together to live in without being married, which is absolutely fine.

And in Denver, Colorado, I see here, which is also absolutely fine, a wonderful city.

And Tanya, you turned to Thomas and said, do you want to get married?

And he said, yes.

Correct.

How is that not a proposal?

Because a proposal, one, I think, requires intent.

You have to know that you're proposing to somebody.

And second,

usually it has the words, will you marry me?

And not, do you want to get married?

Because it's like, do you like eggs and ham?

Sam I am.

You know, that's not a proposal.

That's just a question.

And so I asked him a logistics question.

Kind of got me hoping someone was going to make me some eggs and ham just then.

I know.

No, it's just a question.

Because if he had said no, I would have been like, oh, okay.

We don't need to book wedding venues.

We're just going to cohabitate forever.

Yeah, I'm sure that's the first thing you would have thought of.

Do you want to get married?

He said, no.

You're like, oh, well, then I don't need to worry about this newspaper article.

So I wouldn't have.

I wouldn't have.

And, but instead, he said yes.

So then I was like, I accepted the proposal.

No, you answered the question.

There's a, there's a difference, I think, between a question and a proposal.

Thomas, first of all, how long had you been together at this point, remind me?

We had gotten together at the end of 20,

near the tail end of 2018.

Suddenly the year rememberer is having some difficulties.

It was the tail end of 2018.

So

we've been together for

two-ish years, two and a half years at that point.

And how did you meet?

Cute?

Yes or no?

Yes.

We met through a mutual friend so i i had um no you didn't meet cute then you met mute no no we met very cute

you know what thomas i'm gonna let tanya tell this story unless you liven it up real quick let's go all right go ahead tanya no no no no no no i'm i'm gonna i'm just putting you on warning

all right so uh i moved back from new york um in 2018 and i joined a discord server for denver and i met I met Sloan,

our now mutual friend on that server.

And he had told me nothing about Tanya.

I didn't know she existed.

Meanwhile, on the other end, usually is the case when you don't know someone.

He was collecting information about me and feeding it to Tanya.

It's being like, here's this great guy that you should meet.

And Tanya, from what I'm told, was completely against it.

Being like, I don't care.

I don't care.

And so Sloan was like, well, he's got a job.

Okay.

He's got a house.

Okay.

All right.

He,

what else did Sloan tell you?

He likes rice and eggs.

I do like rice and eggs.

So that was the nail in the coffin.

Wait a minute.

What was that last thing?

Rice and eggs?

Rice and eggs.

That's

a common meal that we like to have as like a quick kind of comfort meal.

A house, a job, and he likes rice and eggs.

I could see getting sold on that.

Yeah.

What are you putting on your rice and eggs?

Are we talking about chives, scallions, crunchy chili sauce?

Whatever the mood fits.

So scallions are a common one.

There's a kind of a dried, pulled pork product that's common in like Asian cuisines.

That goes great on it.

Crispy garlic, crispy shallots.

Can I just interrupt for one second?

Will someone just finally make me some god or whatever damned eggs at this cat?

Totally starving.

Eggs are our favorite.

I am with you 100%.

So what you're talking about is like a Discord matchmaker.

Yep.

Sloan the Discord

It's a working title for the rom-com.

We're all going to write together.

He's one for one right now.

All right.

And Discord is like a chat social media platform, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I was just pretending to understand it.

I've heard about it.

And so he told her all of that stuff.

And then there was one day where he hit me up and was like, we're going to go get Korean fried chicken.

Do you want to join?

And of course, who doesn't want to go get Korean fried chicken?

I do right now.

Come on.

So I accepted his proposal to go get fried chicken.

And then he was like, oh, by the way, one of my friends is going to join.

I was like, okay, cool.

That friend was Tanya.

But you didn't know that he had been feeding this information to Tanya, that he was doing this information gathering.

Not at all.

Oh, he's just bringing a friend.

So Tanya, you knew that this was a potential.

I did.

I knew everything about him.

I knew his age.

I knew where he went to school.

I knew I count numbers, how many years he'd been in New York.

Why do you think Sloan wanted to set you up with Thomas, Tanya?

And what did you think about him when you met him?

I have no idea why he wanted to set us up.

I think he was like, Thomas seems like a really cool guy, and Tanya is the most awesome.

So she deserves a really cool guy.

And

I thought he was really polite.

I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, and I know this is gendered, but he held the door open for me.

And it was really cold outside.

So I didn't have to take my hands out of my pocket, which was really nice.

And he

made sure my water was always full of, my glass was always full of water, which was so kind.

And he was doing, he was doing all this without any

intention of pitching woo.

Exactly.

Because he didn't know that this was a date.

Correct.

I didn't know that he didn't know anything about me, though.

So I was just like, look at this guy making a great first impression.

And then Sloane was really sneaky and was like, Tanya's Tanya's hosting a brunch.

And then I felt compelled to be like, Thomas, would you like to come to brunch?

Right.

Because you're from Atlanta where they're polite.

Someone mentions a brunch.

You got to invite the person.

You have to invite the person.

Right.

Well, your egg alert went off.

Yes, exactly.

I was like, what kind of egg dishes will he bring?

But he came to brunch.

He brought, I spent so much time.

on this brunch.

I made a delicious asparagus tart.

I made a cinch salad.

Don't say anymore.

Because because I haven't eaten.

I haven't eaten yet today.

Jesse, I'm just going to take off my headphones.

You listen to the brunch menu and then wave at me when I can come back because I've got it.

All right.

Go ahead.

Let's hear about that brunch.

And so then Thomas shows up with homemade cinnamon rolls and all the people that were happily eating my food forgot about it and were like, the cinnamon roll is amazing.

And then they just talked about the cinnamon roll the rest of the time for brunch.

And it did not endear him to me.

But

he upstaged you.

He did.

He did upstage me.

But Sloan just kept putting us together until one day, I guess we were like, I guess we're dating now.

We just spent so much time together.

He cinnabooted you out of the picture.

Oh, no.

I worked really hard on that one.

I did listen in, and I'm glad to say, I'll tell you what, Tanya, I don't care for cinnamon rolls at all.

At all.

I would not have even touched them.

What were the other things you were going to make?

Some citrus or something?

No, no, I had made them.

I'd made an asparagus tart and a citrus salad and I'd made a French onion bread pudding.

And I made a cinnamon bourbon punch.

Was this a cinnamon themed?

I didn't know about his cinnamon rolls.

Oh, so it was meant to be.

So after he upstaged you with the cinnamon rolls, why didn't you hate him?

Instead, you liked him.

So sloan just kept inviting us to things over and over and over again until he really wanted this to happen he really did

and then uh one day we hung out without sloan and then we just continued hanging out and now here we are married with the house well that's a wonderful story we continued hanging out and one day i said do you want to get married As a logistics question.

I understand your point of view, but let me get Thomas's point of view.

So you're sitting there while Tanya's in her pajamas reading the newspaper.

What are the words that you remember coming out of her mouth?

Do you want to get married?

And there is a lot of context because

she was saying she was reading those articles about wedding venues getting booked up.

And so it wasn't necessarily just out of the blue.

Had you spoken about getting married before?

You know, like...

I think we had some previous kind of

not formal sit-down conversations, but once where we were kind of trying to get each other's intent on like what the relationship was or right kind of you know make sure we were kind of aligned in in our future plans and so surely when you you moved in together that had to have been part of the context right

yeah that's definitely a big part of the context did she move into your house or did you two get a house together did you say so for a while we were going because we lived pretty our houses were pretty close together um when we had met and so we were probably about 15 minutes away.

And so we were kind of doing a month at her house, a month at my house, back and forth.

And then when the pandemic happened, we defaulted to my house because it was bigger.

And I had adopted a dog who was at that time like 130 pounds.

She's lost a little bit of weight now.

So she's like 115 now.

It's a lot of dog.

She's a very big lap dog.

But since I had the more space, Tanya had her own dog at the time.

So that was the four of us.

And in the pandemic, when we were all locked in the house, her house was a little bit too small for all of us.

So we kind of defaulted to my house.

And then after about

eight months of that,

Tanya was like, okay, let's go buy a house, a bigger house together,

which was part of the plans we had talked about.

It just kind of moved up the timeline, like maybe eight months-ish.

I mean, joining finances is part of

what is typically known as a marriage,

owning property together for sure.

So

it was in the air.

But let me ask you this, Thomas.

When Tanya turned to you in her pajamas and said, do you want to get married?

How did you feel?

I felt great.

Like she was wanting to continue on down this path that we were already continued down.

So we don't have to be like, oh, well, what do we do about this house now?

Or

what do we do about our shared assets?

And so i i genuinely you're not talking you're not really arguing for your side of this case

so so i took it as a proposal and i was like great we she wants to get married she wants to to move forward with this

let me ask you let me ask you a yes or no question your heart did it pit or pat yes all right that was a leading question you knew what

i did swear in the oath earlier so i'm not lying yeah now that you understand what I'm looking for, not logistical answer, but emotional answer.

When she turned to you, did you have a particular feeling that you recall?

I felt loved.

I felt happy.

I felt.

There we go.

Wow.

So that.

Yeah.

Keep going, Thomas.

Let it out.

I felt elated.

Oh, now you're making it up.

I'm just trying to think of the thesaurus for loved and happy.

I felt loved.

Okay.

And are you sitting here before me saying you genuinely took this as a genuine marriage proposal?

I did.

Right.

I called my mom and was like, Tanya and I are engaged now.

Tanya, that seems pretty clear that he thought it was a real marriage proposal.

I started to call her fiancé.

Okay, but Thomas also likes to joke and can carry a joke for days.

And

he did call me.

He's like, hey, fiancé.

And I was like, okay, that's weird.

I did say that to him.

And I was like, haha, very funny.

And I ignored him.

And I continued doing some research on

wedding venues because the article said that they were booking up.

And so I did not at all take this seriously.

I thought he was just having a good time with a good joke.

Tanya, this wasn't, in other words, about a wedding proposal.

This research was just about your commitment to lifelong learning.

I am a lifelong learner.

I do appreciate that.

I also am a planner.

I think that

if somebody, for example, if somebody's like, there's homework to be done, I'm like, okay, well, I am going to do the homework.

One of the things that like blows my mind, I've never like skipped a day of school.

ever.

And Thomas was like, I don't think I went to any classes in college.

And I'm, I I stare at him and I'm like, how are we together?

I don't understand.

So I am a planner.

I would never,

I don't know.

I feel like you need to research the venues if you have intention of getting married one day.

Is your argument that Thomas was too much of a useless slacker

to be taken seriously when he called you his fiancé?

Oh my gosh.

I'm not sure what your argument is here.

No, I just thought he was, I thought he had taken a bit and was running with it.

He was like, you proposed.

And I said, no, I didn't.

And he's like, you're my fiancé now.

And I'm like, no, I'm not.

And then he's like, I'm going to tell everybody we're affianced.

And I'm like, that's hilarious.

I did not, that was literally the reaction.

First of all, thank you for the use of the term affianced.

That's incredible.

I want to be clear that when I really did get engaged in a real way by getting down on one knee with a ring at a beloved family cabin.

I then proceeded to use the word affiance

just constantly until the day I got married.

Just constantly.

I was thrilled about using that word or phrase or whatever it counts as.

Of course you were.

Absolutely.

Thomas, though, are you a prankster?

Do you do you do bits?

Do you carry bits along too far?

How do you respond to that accusation?

I am a little bit of a jokester.

And I do sometimes carry bits.

People will tell me too far, but I don't think they're too far all the time.

Tanya, what's a bit that Thomas has taken too far?

He is really great at puns.

You will say something and he will start it.

No, no, no.

I'm sorry, Tanya.

I asked, tell me about a bit that he's taken too far, but it can't be a pun because a bit is like comedy and a pun is just

an affront to humanity.

I agree.

And he will do this pun for like the entire day, or he'll keep it going until

I had to be like, when I look at you in the eyes and tell you to stop, you have to stop because now I want to kill you.

So

we had to lay some groundwork.

You look at say, this is not a logistical conversation.

I am telling you from my heart, you have to stop.

No, both logistics and emotions are involved.

What was the pun that he took too far?

There was something about gardening, and then he was talking about like leaves and trees and sticks and aspens.

And I don't know.

Yeah, it's one of those classic leaves, sticks.

Leave sticks and aspens.

It's an evergreen, Jesse.

Oh, no.

Goodbye forever.

That joke, it's an evergreen.

Leave, sticks, and aspens is what a panda does when he does forestry.

Is what a panda does when he does forestry.

Is that right?

Our relationship is still very deeply rooted in love.

No, stop it.

I'm looking in your eyes.

I'm looking in your eyes and telling you, don't do this to me.

I mean it.

I mean it, logistically and emotionally.

Let's take a quick recess.

We'll be back in just a moment on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

You're listening to Judge John Hodgman.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

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Thanks to everybody who's gone to maximumfun.org slash join.

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Let them know Jesse and John sent you.

So let me ask you, Thomas, when you called your mom and said, we are engaged,

were you pranking your mom?

I was not.

What was your mom's reaction?

She was very happy and she was telling me how happy she was for me and how, after I had met and started being with Tanya, how happy I had seemed just generally in life.

And you didn't say to her at that point, Psych, it's only logistical conversation.

I did not.

Tanya, how did you find out that other people thought you were engaged?

So I had called my parents to tell them,

not even, I didn't, I did not tell them I was engaged.

I was like, Thomas and I both agree that we're thinking about marriage.

So tell me what requirements I might need for a wedding venue because I'm Hindu and there's some religious aspects that, for example, there's an open flame and not all venues will allow a fire.

And so

I was asking them all of these different questions and I hung up.

And then the next day, my brother called me.

I knew that because of of my Burning Man themed wedding that I had

in an underground chamber.

Very safe.

So my brother called me the next day and he was so upset.

And I was like, what is happening?

And he started the phone call, not even with the hello, but a, you're engaged and you didn't tell me.

And he was, my brother and I are very close and he, he was so upset.

And I'm like, what are you talking about?

And he's like, Ma and Baba told me you're engaged.

How could you not share this very important piece of information with me?

And I'm like, I'm not engaged.

What are you talking about?

And I said, I asked Thomas a logistics question.

This is not going to help me, but Sean was like,

you are an idiot.

You proposed.

You are now engaged.

And I then burst into tears.

I was so upset by this.

I was, no, I was, I like literally started bawling and I'm like, I'm not engaged.

And Thomas was laughing and taking pictures of me as I was crying.

Yeah.

And,

you know, that's how I figured out that other people thought that this very simple, like kind of throwaway question that I had was a proposal.

It was a throwaway question.

Just a little toss-off.

Hey, you want some ham and eggs?

And also, do you want to get married?

I can verify that these photos were taken because you submitted them as evidence.

I did.

Screenshots of your

text conversations, I presume with your brother.

These are actually with a group of friends.

With a group of friends.

I was like, Thomas thinks we're engaged.

And they were all like, what?

And then I was sending them screenshots and updating you.

Of you, the photos that Thomas took of you, you know, cringing with your hoodie pulled over your head in embarrassment.

Looks like there's one of these in a fetal position.

Yes, this is Thomas taking pictures of me.

You write, I don't understand.

I asked him a logistics question.

You keep repeating this phrase as though this is a very common thing.

I had to know if he wanted to get married.

What's happening?

I'm legit crying because I didn't know.

Yes.

So you felt really shocked.

I did.

I was really taken aback

because I think,

like I said, a proposal has intention behind it.

And it is meant to be,

I think we all have different hallmarks in our life.

And if marriage is part of one of the hallmarks that you've chosen for yourself, then a proposal is also part of that.

That there's a sense of excitement related to that.

There's a sense of sharing that goes along with that.

It's not something

where you're like,

wait, I'm engaged?

It's not like a surprise birthday party where you walk in and you're like, hey.

So I think that it didn't feel like there was any thought put into it.

Okay.

Well, obviously on his part, none.

And on your part, very little.

In this particular.

We're not one for romance.

Well, maybe that's true or maybe that's not true.

Tanya, was there a kind of proposal that you wanted or anticipated?

Let's say, for example, example,

you turned to Thomas and you were very clear and you're like,

I am not proposing marriage to you.

I am asking you, hypothetically,

for the purpose of logistics, you know, a common logistics question,

so that we might plan to reserve a venue.

Would you be open to the idea of being married and getting married, should one of us propose to the other at some point in the future if you had been very clear about that right

what would you then anticipate would happen after what would the proposal be that you want it and perhaps still want

thomas uh

lies he is actually very romantic Right.

That's one of the foundations of a healthy marriage, is that one of them be a romantic liar.

Yes.

I don't know why he's denying it.

He showed up to my work and he had chocolates and he had flowers and he brought me shrimp tempura, you know, as you do.

And I opened the door.

What occasion is this?

Valentine's Day.

Oh, Valentine's Day.

And I opened the door, saw him, and then I promptly shut the door in his face.

Slammed.

It wasn't just shut.

It was slammed.

Because I was so taken aback because

he's half telling the truth.

I am not romantic, but thomas is very romantic um he has gotten me a charm bracelet and every year he thinks back and reflects on the year and gets a charm that's related to that and um i got him a heart full of beef jerky once uh different flavors of beef jerky a heartful yeah it was a heart-shaped box full of different flavors of beef jerky

so that's my level of romance but you never were so romantic as to give him a bouquet of shrimps for example.

No, no.

Yeah, a different standard.

It's different.

Yeah.

So I,

in my mind, I think that Thomas or me, if I had been the one proposing, I think both of us would have done a really excellent job at it.

And it wouldn't have been something where I hadn't brushed my teeth or my hair, sitting in ratty pajamas, randomly reading the newspaper.

But it sounds to me like you want to split the difference because you, you know, a lot of people, I think, want a proposal to be a grand romantic gesture with a bouquet of shrimps and all of the trappings.

But in this case, Thomas already auditioned his romantic gesture to you at Valentine's Day and you slammed the door in his face.

That was so many years ago.

I've gotten better at receiving romantic gifts.

But I think that

in my mind, I just keep going back to this idea of intention because I do think that in many ways it is

a mindful declaration of love.

I do love him.

If I had been proposing, I think I would have exerted more effort into showing just how much I love and appreciate him and all of the wonderful things that he has done and brought into my life.

Tanya, before you even met Thomas,

had you ever imagined a proposal?

Oh, no.

I

had never even dreamed of a wedding.

I hadn't dreamt of dating anybody.

I am not,

I was very happy to be single.

It took Sloan repeated attempts to get me to meet Thomas.

And so I

really appreciated.

the friends and the family that I had.

And I wasn't really looking to expand that through a relationship or marriage, a romantic relationship.

You never had some like rom-com fairy tale idea of what a proposal would look like in your life, per se.

No, not at all.

What about you, Thomas?

Uh, similar.

I was, um,

I had never really gone out ever in my life with the intention of like trying to actually like date somebody.

I always took more of the approach, like, if I find somebody that I enjoy spending their time with and something more evolves, then I'm more than happy to get with them and spend my life with them.

But if if that doesn't ever happen, I'm perfectly content and happy just going on my own way with my giant dog.

Let me ask you a logistical question, Tanya.

Are you married?

We are married.

We got married, right?

We did get married.

So was there a proposal of some kind aside from this one that we're discussing?

I would call them pity proposals.

So, Thomas.

Hang on.

Pity proposals.

Multiple proposals.

So the day her brother called and she got very upset when she learned that we were engaged.

I did give her a pity proposal then.

What form did your pity proposal take at that time?

Well, you saw the pictures where she's on the couch, you know, with her hood and like tears streaming down.

He was going to say snot.

There was also snot

involved.

It was very traumatic for me.

I didn't want to embarrass her too much on the show.

So I got down on the knee and gave her a proposal then.

And she, of course, was like, rejected it.

Even though we were still had

our dates booked to go tour wedding venues.

I don't care how romantic or unromantic you are.

I would say most people do not want to be proposed to when they have snot pouring out of their nose and their partners taking their picture to text to the friends.

Well, I had a document.

Sure.

No, I mean, then we have that.

But then the second one, I'd say, is not a pretty proposal.

I got a little, she told the story about the charm bracelet.

So I got a little ring as a charm.

And then

we were outside on the patio doing something.

I don't remember what.

Playing board game or something.

And I got down on the knee and gave her an actual proposal.

I disagree.

Oh, no.

Come on, Tanya.

Take the win.

He did not get down on the knee.

He did get down on the knee.

And he did give me a box.

And he said, Here's your real proposal.

And then gave me the ring.

I said, Do you want to marry me?

I didn't say, Here's your real proposal.

But see, there's no documentation.

Yeah, why wasn't there documentation at this moment?

Because it's pretty, pretty pivotal.

I don't see any evidence.

I mean, look, you did send in some photos of these nice dogs, and I like them very much.

They're very, very handsome.

Jesse, you see these dogs?

Yeah, they're

looking pretty good here.

I'm just going to...

Oh.

An epic professional photography shoot here.

Yes.

These are beautiful golden boys.

Yay.

I love

their wreaths of, what is it like?

Baby's breath that they're wearing?

Yes.

As collars.

So

in.

Our marriage, instead of exchanging rings, we exchanged garlands.

And so

I,

my parents were over Zoom, and we went ahead and did.

My dad served as kind of a priest, and then we went and got paperwork signed.

And I went to the dollar store and the flower store, and I created these like baby breath garlands that we could exchange.

And then our dogs got to wear them for our professional dog shoot/slash what was supposed to be an engagement shoot, but it was mostly for the dogs.

So you admit that you got engaged at some point.

No, we didn't.

That's why it's not called an engagement shoot.

We were never engaged.

You booked a photographer for an engagement shoot, and then you got to this beautiful place in the Rocky Mountains.

And you're like, actually, I decided I'm not engaged, logistically speaking.

Take pictures of the dogs instead.

And we signed the marriage license during that photo shoot as well.

So the photographer was hired to take pictures for the wedding at the venue that I had booked for next year.

And she was very kind and was like, I have this one hour that I can gift to y'all for an engagement shoot.

And we were like, can we bring our dogs?

And she was like, yeah.

And so.

So this photo shoot was only your dogs because you resisted the idea that you were engaged?

Or were you also photographed?

We were also photographed.

And in Colorado, you can use animals as your witness.

So

we signed our marriage license since then, and we have our dogs' paw prints on the witness lines of our marriage certificate.

Colorado's like, ah, they legalize marijuana everywhere else.

Okay, dogs can witness wedding.

Yurts are legally mansions.

Mountains are money.

Mountains are money.

So true.

This is Kir and Remy, these two dogs.

And unfortunately, Remy passed away recently.

I'm sorry.

And now there is a new dog named Dashi in the picture as well.

Gotcha.

And Kir is the big girl, and Remy and Dashi were the little ones.

Got it.

So look, this feels like a fairly slender hair to split, Tanya, at this point.

Like,

what do you want out of this?

Do you feel that you were ever properly proposed to?

No.

and I don't feel like we were engaged.

You can get married without ever being engaged.

There was also a newspaper article on that, and I should have sent that in as well.

There's no, there's no legal requirement of engagement.

Exactly.

You can see one of my friends googling, do you have to be engaged to be married?

in one of the screenshots.

So I don't feel like I was ever

engaged.

I certainly never announced that I was engaged to anybody.

I just said, we we are going to be married.

And they're like, so are you engaged?

And I was like, no.

And so we just had a marriage without an engagement.

And I

really would like Thomas to just stop saying we were engaged.

I don't think we were ever engaged.

I think that I.

What was now we're in a different world realm here because Thomas said.

that he got down on one knee.

You disagree.

I understand this.

Yes.

You remember it differently.

Thomas said, he said, will you marry me?

And handed you a box containing a charm for your ongoing charm bracelet that had a little ring on it, like I presume an engagement style ring.

Not a ring per se, but the representation of one for your charm bracelet.

And he said, this is Thomas's words.

I'm going back through the record.

Will you marry me?

I'm for real in proposing to you.

And

you do not remember it that way.

I don't.

And, you know, if he had submitted evidence, maybe we could all understand whether or not he'd done this.

Do you remember any details of that day at all?

Yes.

I think

we were outside on the patio.

I think we were both playing a game.

And then

for practicality's sake, we met October 23rd of 2018.

We closed on our house October 23rd of 2020.

And then we signed our marriage registration forms on October 23rd of 2021.

That way I only have one date to remember, October 23rd.

And what was the date of this second non-proposal?

Can't remember, not October 23rd.

Exactly.

Not October 23rd.

I think it was before

we did the sign the marriage license.

Do you remember what you said to him when he gave you the box?

I said

aw,

because it was really, I did say ah.

i said awe and i uh said this is lovely and

i love it and

there is also a yes in there i don't remember you proposing i just remember being like this is lovely uh and

then

putting it on my charm i love it because you expressed real emotion while also maintaining true ambiguity.

So

about what your feeling was about this, whether this moment indicated that you are now engaged.

So

it felt because I get a charm every year.

And so it didn't...

That did not replace the charm that I give her yearly.

That was an extra one.

So how long after your Tanya's quote-unquote non-proposal did this wedding happen and what was it like?

It was less than a, well, if we're going, it was less than a year if we're going off of when we did the ceremony, like on Zoom with your dad, and when we signed the marriage license, because it was

February or March of 2021

when she did the ambiguous proposal, I guess.

And then October of that year was when we signed the marriage license.

So you were planning this in between, right, Tanya?

One presumes you're the logistical one.

You planned this wedding, correct?

We had

an actual actual venue with the physical ceremony that's something my mom really wanted um with us with an open flyer and right um close friends and family that was in june of 2022.

um we went why did you allow that to even happen if you weren't engaged because you don't need to be engaged to be married and thomas had said he did want to be married Because I accepted a proposal.

No, because we both were walking towards a similar goal of marriage.

Because if you were like, I don't want to get married, and

I drew, and I think Thomas would support me in this, is that I would have said, Okay, that is not a common goal that we're working towards, and I don't need to look at venues.

I think that that is actually the reaction that I would have had, as opposed to being like, I can't believe you don't want to get married.

So, you had the, you had a civil, a civil ceremony,

small with Zoom,

and then later you booked this venue.

Yes.

Your logistical planning paid off.

The venue was already booked by the time we had the

ceremony at home and signed the marriage license.

I'm frighteningly efficient.

I have zero doubt.

And your contention, Tanya, is

that you have never been proposed to, nor did you propose to your husband, and you were never engaged.

You had a series of half-serious conversations that led to a profound lifelong commitment as though you fell down the stairs,

which is an incredible rom-com, right?

It's like, yeah, well, you fell down a set of stairs and at the bottom of it, you were married.

You don't have to be engaged.

I have fallen down a flight of stairs.

I am.

And, you know, I think that it did kind of feel like that.

I was like, well, I guess we're doing this now.

But I think my contention is that I really appreciate being married to Thomas.

I think that he's super awesome and cool.

And I am glad that our goals were both aligned towards marriage.

Keep saying how good I am.

But what I would say is that I did not propose to him.

I do think that we planned a wedding.

And I do, obviously we're married.

But I don't know.

I think the, again, I think being engaged is a moment in time.

And I think a proposal is a moment in time.

And I don't know that those moments truly happened.

And if I were to argue that I did propose, I would tell you that that is not how I would propose at all.

I would not propose like that to Thomas.

I would do a much better job.

I will argue that those are moments in time.

And if they weren't moments of time, we wouldn't be here right now discussing them.

She submitted all of her evidence about that moment of time.

Which one of you went to college and didn't go to any classes?

I mean, what is time really?

We are moving through time.

Oh,

I was being productive with my time when I wasn't at classes.

I made a decision.

I was being more productive, not.

in class.

I guess your point is it's what happened even if it wasn't what was quote unquote meant to happen.

I want to know, Tanya, you say that

if you were to have proposed to Thomas that he would do a good job.

Yes.

You have something in mind.

No, but

I could come up with something.

Yeah, why don't you think on that?

Because I know

I have everything I need in order to make my own decision and to issue my sentence.

So I'll be back in a moment with my verdict.

Please rise as Judge Sean Hotman exits the courtroom.

Tanya, how do you feel right now?

Not great after that hurting shots.

But, you know, hopefully this gives some ideas to listeners that you can indeed get married without being engaged.

You're not the only one.

There's other people like us out there.

Thomas, how do you feel?

I feel pretty good.

I think,

sure, maybe you could get married without being engaged, but that would be more of a spur of the moment thing and not a year-long process of booking venues and finding caterers going to taste things with the caterer and

having a photographer professionally do photo shoots of your dogs witnessing your marriage.

Surprise, a wedding is happening today.

Put this on and meet me at the church in five minutes.

Do either of you regret how this went down?

I don't regret anything at all.

I think that I'm a little saddened that I didn't get to share a story of engagement with my friends and family, that there wasn't a source of collective joy that occurred

because Thomas got to have that moment with his mom.

And I didn't get to have that moment with anybody.

So I think I'm a little saddened by that.

We'll see what Judge Hodgman has to say about all this when we come back in just a moment.

You know, we've been doing my brother, my brother, me for 15 years.

And

maybe you stopped listening for a while.

Maybe you never listened.

And you're probably assuming three white guys talking for 15 years.

I know where this has ended up.

But no.

No, you would be wrong.

We're as shocked as you are that we have not fallen into some sort of horrific scandal or just turned into a big crypto thing.

Yeah.

you don't even really know how crypto works.

The only NFTs I'm into are naughty, funny things, which is what we talk about on my brother, my brother, and me.

We serve it up every Monday for you if you're listening.

And if not, we just leave it out back and goes rotten.

So check it out on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, we're over 70 episodes into our show.

Let's learn everything.

So let's do a quick progress check.

Have we learned about quantum physics?

Yes, episode 59.

We haven't learned about the history of gossip yet, have we?

Yes, we have.

Same episode, actually.

Have we talked to Tom Scott about his love of roller coasters?

Episode 64.

So how close are we to learning everything?

Bad news.

We still haven't learned everything yet.

Oh, we're ruined.

No, no, no.

It's good news as well.

There is still a lot to learn.

Woo!

I'm Dr.

Ella Hubber.

I'm regular Tom Long.

I'm Caroline Roper, and on Let's Learn Everything, we learn about science and a bit of everything else too.

And although we haven't learned everything yet, I've got a pretty good feeling about this next episode.

Join us every other Thursday on Maximum Fun.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman re-enters the courtroom and presents his verdict.

I mean, the truth is, this is a wonderful story.

You know,

obviously,

It's a funny story to tell.

And this is not to discount your very real and and truly mixed feelings about the story and the way things happen, Tanya.

But, you know, if I were writing a rom-com,

such as a musical rom-com called Up Here on Hulu, you should go check it out right away.

Thanks.

But if I were writing a new rom-com, this would be a funny thing to happen and adorable, especially since it speaks to both of your your high qualities as a couple, like that you are so logistically minded, Tanya.

And

Thomas Thomas is kind of this

freeform, beautiful space cadet.

Yeah, more freeform, let's put it that way.

I don't want to say space cadet.

I'll say it anyway.

I said it, it's done.

Because Thomas, you're right.

Time moves in one direction.

Things get said.

And even though we have the magic of editing in podcasts, we don't have the magic of editing in our own lives.

Sadly.

I think it's absolutely adorable that you turned to him and said, do you want to get married?

And hold to this day that no one could have interpreted that as a proposal.

Thomas interpreted it as a proposal, even though it took a while to get there to him saying that he felt loved in that moment.

There is evidence enough that he felt that his life was moving into a new state of affiancedment

because he genuinely called his mom, not as a prank, to tell her this news.

This doesn't mean that what happened after was fair or cool.

You know, obviously there was a misunderstanding about what was happening.

It was a reasonable, Tanya, it was a reasonable misunderstanding.

You know, you were proposing something.

You were proposing the idea of getting married, which is most people's idea of what a proposal is.

But I, you know, it's like,

Are you an attorney, Tanya?

No.

No,

I'm a professor.

You don't fit.

Well, all right.

You can split hairs as a professor.

I get it.

But then time continued to move in the one direction it tends to move in, or at least as we perceive it as humans.

And what started as a funny misunderstanding that you found balance in turned into a bit, which, Thomas, you have admitted to doing,

that you have...

Let's just say, in a loving way, needled your wife over the years by insisting that she proposed to you a reasonable misunderstanding

but erasing the nuance of what actually happened which was

she was speaking logistically

and then the other nuance that happened which was once the cat got out of the bag and cats rarely get back into them after that

And it was spread around to her family, she was genuinely upset because this is not how she wanted it to go down.

Now, to your great credit, Thomas, you tried to make up for it.

First, while taking her picture as snot put out of her nose.

Bad move.

And then a second time later, however, when she was not crying, when you acted with all of the intention

that Tanya says has to be part of a proposal,

to get down on one knee and to give her a symbolic ring.

Most people, Tanya, would accept this as a proposal.

The fact that you don't remember it the same way suggests one of two things to me.

One is that much like the time when I met former vice president Al Gore, and he knew my name and talked to me for a while.

This is back during a time when I was, you know, on television a lot.

And he walked away.

And I said to the person I was with, like, I just met Al Gore.

She said, yeah, and he hugged you.

I'm like, I have no memory of that.

You know, Al Gore just hugged you.

I don't know.

My memory is erased.

You know, sometimes you have overwhelming emotions that kind of cloud your memory of things happening.

Or he's a liar, I guess.

I mean, I don't think he's lying about doing that stuff.

Whatever the case is.

The circuit was not completed because even though he believes that he acted with intention, you did not, with intention, say, yes, I will accept your proposal and be married to you and be engaged, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

So I acknowledge that this was not intended to be a proposal and to continue to take and insist that it was

is erasing to Tanya's feelings and therefore it has to stop.

Tell the story as it is.

Don't fake it.

It's part of history now.

It is not something we can edit.

Whether or not you have regret over not having a chance to be engaged and to share that period of time with your family and others.

Well, that's gone now, Tanya, forever.

Or is it?

You know, you had your friend search that thing up saying you don't have to be engaged to get married.

I just found a law on my notebook here that says you don't have to be unmarried to get engaged.

So

obviously you're the driver of this relationship, Tanya.

You're the decision maker.

So I would encourage you, if you wish, to decide to propose with intention to Thomas now

so that we can finally close this loop and have it happen.

I don't believe time is a flat circle.

Unfortunately, I feel like we all just march to death.

Hi, kids.

But we can have this moment if you want it on this podcast during Max Fun Drive.

It would be really great,

but it's really up to you.

So, Tanya, let me, I say this with all respect, and I absolutely will accept, I accept you as an individual as a right to determine what happens.

And no is a complete sentence.

Do you accept this rose?

And will you take it and offer it to Thomas as a retroactive proposal of marriage?

And if so, well, I mean, yes or no?

Yes.

You've made me the happiest podcast host on earth.

Will you then please propose to your bachelor?

I will.

I will.

I will hold his hand.

Oh my gosh, it's happening.

Jesse, it's happening.

Jesse, hold my hand.

Hold my hand over the Zoom.

Thomas, will you do me the greatest honor of accepting my proposal to stay married

for forevermore?

I do.

I accept.

I now pronounced you affiance.

I don't ever officiate weddings or divorces in my, but I will, in this case, make an exception and fake legally pronounced you engaged.

Your engagement period shall last one year.

I'm not a fan of super long engagements or super short ones.

One year is right down the middle.

I want you to call your family and tell them there's a new chapter of the story.

We got engaged in a podcast.

I insist that you have a joint engagement party.

Oh my gosh.

And that you better start reserving a venue because I'm booking them all up.

And I think that probably what would be a good idea is for you, if you feel like it, to make an like a, you know, go to one of those wedding websites or whatever, create an engagement celebration website and let us know the URL so that we can get it out to our listeners so they can send you congratulations.

That would be amazing.

And you're going to have one year of delightful engagement, have a party, and then at the end of the year, I don't know what, you're just married because that's what marriage is.

You're just still married.

This is the sound of a gavel.

Judge John Hodgman rules.

Check out up here on Hulu.

That is all.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Tanya, how do you feel?

Oh my gosh, I'm so excited.

I'm excited that I got to mindfully propose to Thomas and that I get to share exciting news with people and I get to hear congratulations, which I never got to really hear.

So I feel great.

I'm very excited.

Thomas, how about you?

Feeling good.

I like to see my wife happy.

I was so touched by that proposal.

I've been married for over a decade now, and it made me want to go home and high-five my wife.

You should do it because you can't go back in time and regret not doing it.

Thomas, Tanya, thank you for joining us on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

Thank you.

Thank you for having us.

Another Judge John Hodgman case is in the books.

In just a second, we'll have swift justice.

First, our thanks to Redditor T-Biscuit54 for naming this week's episode.

You can join the conversation and name an episode at maximumfun.reddit.com.

Evidence and photos from the show are, of course, on the episode page at maximumfun.org and on Instagram at instagram.com slash judgejohnhodgman.

If you're on Instagram, make sure to follow us.

Judge John Hodgman was created by Jesse Thorne and John Hodgman.

Our producer is Valerie Moffat.

Our lit against this week, recorded by Mike Barnhart at Rocky Mountain Recorders in Denver, where mountains are money.

And yurts are mansions.

Let's get to Swift.

You got to stay ahead of the curve.

Let's get to Swift Justice, where we answer your small disputes with quick judgment.

Tanya writes, by the way, same Tanya.

Same Tanya.

Same Tanya.

A few years ago, my husband Thomas and I played a game of Scrabble.

I won, but he demanded a recount and found an extra tile in the bag.

He then called my win invalid.

I contend everyone benefited from that extra tile, not just me.

Please rule that I won the game.

Logistically speaking, Tanya is absolutely correct.

There's no harm, no foul.

You both missed a tile.

I don't know what to do.

Take that tile and add that number to both of your scores.

I don't know.

Next time when you're reaching in the bag, make sure you get your tiles.

John, I like that we have made a hard pivot toward logistics, like season two of The Wire.

Yeah, exactly so.

Oh, hey, you have a logistic dispute?

I think we got them covered.

But here's a dispute that I would like to hear, naming disputes.

Oh.

You know, like

maybe

you and your partner have a dispute over what to name your dog or your cat or your iguana.

Maybe you and someone you love have a dispute over what to name your child.

I'd love to decide for you.

Maybe you and your partner can't figure out how to call your child Archie without naming them Archibald or Archer, which is the name of your favorite TV show and thus would be a weird thing to name your child.

Not that this is a personal thing that my wife and I went through.

And maybe it's not even that.

Maybe you've got two ideas of what to title your unpublished novel, or you and your writing partner have two ideas about what to name a main character.

Any kind of naming dispute that you have.

Maybe you're a bazillionaire buying a mega yacht, like on below deck, and you don't know what to call it.

Do you call it My Serena or what's the other one?

The other boat they have.

Anyway, it doesn't matter.

You know what I'm talking about, naming disputes.

My Siana.

My Sienna was the name of Captain Lee's boat.

Now they all have names like home or port.

Anyway.

Or yeah, what about the name of a song that you're writing and you can't decide between two?

Give me two options for a name, and Jesse and I will decide it for you.

Go to maximumfund.org/slash JJHO to submit that and all of your disputes.

We need them, right, Jesse?

Maximumfund.org slash JJHO is where you can submit your cases.

They don't have to be about naming things.

We'll take anything.

If you got a case, send it to us.

You know, we'll parse it.

We do the sifting, so you don't have to worry about whether your dispute is wheat or chaff.

You know, our motto: we'll parse it.

I mean, pretty much.

Maximumfun.org/slash JJHO.

Got a beef?

Send it into the parsers.

We need your disputes to do the show.

So I hope you'll send that in.

Maximumfun.org slash JJHO.

And I just say, check out up here on Hulu.

It's a lot of fun.

Really fun show.

Yeah, it's a really fun show.

Maximumfun.org slash JJ H.O.

Hey, what are we going to do?

We'll talk to you next time on the What?

Judge John Hodgman podcast.

MaximumFun.org.

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