As some of you may already know, I got engaged last week. I proposed to the smart, funny, gorgeous Elizabeth Harding last Saturday morning after a walk along the lake. I was delighted when she responded: “Yes, I will marry you.”

There is no date yet for the wedding, and we are not in any particular rush to set one.

Elizabeth is a Unitarian Universalist minister. Right now, she is consulting minister at Prairie Circle Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Grayslake, Ill. You can read some of her sermons here.

Interestingly, Elizabeth and I have known each other — after a fashion — since we were 4 years old. We attended the Inter-American Magnet School from preschool through the eighth grade. I can safely say that we were not close back then. If we ever exchanged more than a few sentences of conversation during those 10 years, I’ve entirely forgotten them.

But you seemingly cannot maintain any presence on Facebook for long without your past creeping up on you. In this case, it was a benevolent creeping. Once the number of Inter-American grads who had connected on Facebook reached a tipping point, it was clearly time to reunite, albeit unofficially. Elizabeth did not attend the first get-together, but she did make it out for a second reunion last June. Lucky me!

As we milled around Navy Pier before heading to the Reagle Beagle (which I recommend for kitsch value alone), I explained to Elizabeth that I had taken to using Twitter to explore important topics such as my need for a system to tell apart my black dress socks from my navy blue ones. She laughed.

You know, when a pretty girl laughs at your jokes, she has a way of getting your hopes up. I am constantly on my guard against false hope. As a Cubs fan, I’ve developed a kind of self-protective hope allergy, especially after 1984 and 2003. But in this case, I let my hopes get the better of me. I let myself get carried away. I chose wisely.

So now are we engaged. We are, most assuredly, carried away. Where shall we go? I look forward to the adventure of finding out.