He’s Engaged With Something Else

(My then-girlfriend and I have been dating seriously for nearly a year and a half. Her parents moved across the country about the same time we got serious. She is visiting her parents who flew back and are staying at a resort; I join them over the weekend. The four of us are sitting around the pool until my girlfriend and her mother go upstairs. This leaves me alone with her father, a man of few words. We engage in some brief small talk, then I decide to pop “the question before the question.”)

Me: “So, do I have your permission to marry your daughter?”

Father: “Well, I don’t see why not; you’re both mature adults.” *without missing a beat* “So, who do you like in the [College Football] game today?”

Me: […]

(He never did like deep discussions, but still! He did keep it a secret from my future mother-in-law, however, until I popped the question to my now-wife.)