I proposed to Amy in 1981 in an unorthodox way.
I lived in Williston, North Dakota, and worked as the News Director for radio station KGCX. Amy lived fifty miles away in Tioga, where she was a teacher at the high school. Since I didn't have a car, and she only had access to her family's car intermittently, my courtship was rather sporadic and long distance. But it was bearing a bumper crop from the smooch tree, so I thought the time was ripe to 'pop the question'.
The MonDak Utility Company had a large community room with a stage in their downtown Williston building, which they donated to different groups and individuals for public events. I decided that my grubby little town needed a solo pantomime show, by yours truly, to give it some cultural tone. MonDak was glad to oblige, and I began advertising the show to all my friends and co-workers at the radio station, as well as everyone at the LDS branch I attended. The local newspaper picked up on it, and I was able to slip in some freebie advertising on the air while doing my newscasts. So attendance turned out to be good.
I closed the show with my musical saw routine, where I brought out a trombone case in which said saw lay nestled -- much to my bewilderment. After various pieces of schtick I discover its real use as a musical instrument and sit down to play a selection of show tunes.
This particular time, however, I changed the routine. I beckoned for Amy to come up on stage and to sit next to me -- and then launched into a high-pitched rendition of Mendelssohn's Wedding March. My matrimonial intentions could not have been any plainer. Amy blushed until her face took on the hue of a deeply ripe eggplant. Then she nodded yes and scampered off the stage and out the back door.
I finished my performance to a modest standing ovation, tore off the clown makeup at lightning speed, and fled out of the MonDak building to where I knew she would be waiting for me -- the Service Drug Store on Main Street.
Over endless mugs of hot chocolate that winter eve, we discussed our future together. That was when she sprung the first of many surprises on me.
"Timmy, I want to have a lot of children" she said softly to me.
"Yes, dear" I replied dreamily, lost in the ambient stillness of her cottony brown eyes.
"A dozen, like my mother has" she said sweetly.
"Of course, dear. We can . . . gakk!" I suddenly found a lump of solidified cocoa in my throat that caused a brief choking spell.
When I had recovered I did the only manly thing possible. I said 'Okey-dokey'.
And so it came to pass, fifteen years later, that we had welcomed 8 little rugrats into our home, and had no plans to terminate the basic goal until a full dozen were granted us.
That we did not achieve our goal is a tale for another day.
The day before the Sunday of which I wish to speak was a typical Torkildson Saturday -- full of sound and fury; the kind of Donnybrook that only eight rambunctious children and two harried parents can produce.
When the hollering and scrambling had subsided to a simmering murmur that evening after dinner, I gathered my loved ones around me to reveal an Executive Decision I had reached sometime earlier. In order to make Sunday morning as nearly sane and normal as possible, I announced, we would be spending the evening getting all our Sunday church clothes together on the living room sofa, checking for stains and stray threads that needed attending to, as well as lining up our Sunday shoes in front of the sofa for inspection -- so that any pairs that were dull and scuffled could be immediately polished.
Much to my surprise, and Amy's, the kids actually settled down placidly and executed this plan in a matter of only 2 hours, with hardly any conniption fits -- the big ones helping the little ones until everything was shipshape and Bristol fashion.
We all went to bed that night with happy expectations of a quiet Sabbath morning spent enjoying each other's company instead of the mad scramble to get dressed in time for Sacrament Meeting that was the norm.
At least Amy and I went to bed with that expectation. The kids, those little fiends, apparently had something else in mind.
Because the next morning they were up well before their mother and father, in order to play a new game that their fertile imaginations had just come up with -- called, I believe, "Throw Your Sunday Shoes Around Until You Can't Find Them and Then Start Tying Up Shirts and Blouses into Knots".
Amy and I interrupted this orgy of sartorial whimsy just in time to save their clothes from utter ruin. But the shoes were gone to . . . who knows where? We hunted for them, without success. Sacrament Meeting was just minutes away, and the chapel was a full block down the street.
So I made another Executive Decision.
"All of you" I barked, "get dressed and get out the door. Since you obviously didn't want to wear shoes to church, you can go bare foot!"
Admittedly, this did not have the disciplinary effect I was aiming for. The kids whooped with glee and rushed out the door to let their bare feet slide through the verdant summer lawns of our neighbors. I shrugged at Amy, who was looking at me with a stunned expression (which I was getting more and more used to) and we followed them to church.
I'm happy to say that this little episode had no detrimental effect on them. In fact, they were the envy of every child in Primary that day. I heard afterwards that a sort of mutiny took place during Sharing Time, when most of the kids slipped off their shoes and socks to wiggle their toes in the face of their befuddled teachers.
We had just gotten home and were settled around the kitchen table for dinner, where I was lecturing my little ones, in a sincerely pompous manner, on the importance of Order and Planning, when there was a knock on the front door. Amy answered it to find the Relief Society President smiling at her, with a large cardboard box in her arms. She came in but did not stay long, simply saying that a hasty collection after church had netted a dozen or so pairs of shoes that she thought would fit our children for now, and she would be back with a chit we could take to ZCMI Department Store to outfit each one of them with a decent pair of shoes.
I began to chuckle at her misunderstanding of the situation, considering it a huge joke. But one look at Amy's crimson tears of embarrassment told me I had, once again, miscalculated things very badly. I explained the situation as well as I could to the puzzled Relief Society President and asked her to please return the shoes to their previous owners. We had plenty of footwear for the kids -- we just didn't happen to know where it was at the moment.
After she left with the box of shoes, the house became preternaturally quiet. The kids could see that Mom was in a Mood. And to trifle with her while she was held captive by one of these Moods was to court instant death.
I sat silently in my recliner the rest of that Sunday afternoon, reflecting that Amy and I had come a long way from that winter night at the MonDak community room.
