Carol’s Column

Look before you leap

BEWARE. Tomorrow is Leap Year's Day. The day when male chauvinism is cast aside and women become the aggressors.

Tomorrow is the day you can, officially, propose to your beloved and ask him to plight his troth, his BMW and his bank balance.

But be warned. Prunella and Clarence Tuttle were a case in point.

Prunella had loved Clarence for years and although their relationship had reached mental fruition, Clarence, for some reason, declined to propose to Prunella.

And then suddenly, it was Leap Year's Day. Spraying herself with Diorissimo and little else, Prunella leapt upon Clarence and proposed.

Taken by surprise, he said "yes", which should have been the beginning of a beautiful story.

But read on.

The wedding had gone smoothly other than the crusty uncle of 93 who got stuck in the hotel's toilet bowl and had to be chiselled out by the fire brigade.

In a glow of post champagne euphoria, the Tuttles set off to their first-night destination, a romantic farmhouse hotel among the rolling hills of the Magaliesberg. Alack, en route, Clarence discovered he'd lost Prunella. She was nowhere to be found. He shot back to the reception to discover a tearful Prunella loading an automatic machine gun. She was not a little distraught.

He managed to persuade her it had been a genuine error and the soon-to-be-loving Tuttles set off again only to break down somewhere in the remote Magaliesberg. They abandoned their jalopy and walked the last two kilometres to their romantic little inn. Where they fell into bed utterly exhausted and totally unable to take advantage of their new status.

The following morning, they discovered their car and newly purchased honeymoon luggage had been stolen. Totally bereft, they returned to the hotel and breakfasted in their wedding apparel.

After alerting the Magaliesberg Mounties, the Tuttles rediscovered their small car parked elsewhere. They'd mistaken the road.

The Tuttles travelled coastwards and, in the way that married couples do, pushed single beds together in order to provide a sufficiently spacious marital bower in which to consummate the union.

However, on their second night, the beds parted and Clarence slipped to the floor injuring his left elbow, his collar bone, his coccyx and cracking his third and fourth right ribs. By the time he'd been strapped and bandaged, Clarence's manoeuvrability was considerably affected and the Tuttles had to be content with merely holding hands, albeit carefully.

Slowly and unconsummatedly, their honeymoon progressed until they reached the seaside. Where, near Pimpel Baai, the Tuttles found a deserted beach and proceeded to tan au naturel where tragically, both sustained severe burns on their protruding appendages that had never sunburnt before and they spent the rest of their honeymoon lying on two single beds that had not been pushed together, trussed like two chickens in gauze and vaseline.

A month after they returned from honeymoon, before Clarence had fully recovered, Prunella ran away with a wheel tapper on the Durban line and Clarence never did get to cement his marital relations.

I was recounting this sad tale to my family as we sat round the diningroom table discussing the advent of Leap Year's Day.

"The moral of the story is that it is unwise to act precipitously tomorrow. So, no proposals or anything foolish like that."

"Oh come on, Ma," said my teenage daughter. "Marriage is the pits anyway, no matter who proposes. Knowing what you do today, would you ask a man to marry you, or alternatively, say 'yes' if one proposed?"

I looked at my happy little family. My husband was engrossed in the newspaper, my oldest unmarried son was plugged into his walkman oblivious to everything. My second son was riding a camel in Egypt, my third had plugged the extension cord to the phone and was conducting a talk marathon with Lisa Felscher while my daughter was practising tennis backhands with the cereal. Two of the three dogs were chewing the bargain Made in Hong Kong genuine Persian rug, while the third was trying to eat the cat.

Everywhere, the sight of happy domesticity reigned. The paint peeled walls, the crookedly hung curtains, the bruised and battered furniture, the worn upholstery.

"If someone proposed to me on Leap Year's Day, I'd sprint to Siberia on my innerspring takkies as fast as I could go," said my daughter.

She could be right.

Mind you, if a Robert Redford look-alike with a Harry Oppenheimer bank balance, a red Ferrari and a tiny bottom stashed into a pair of faded denims was to appear on the scene, who knows?

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