Awwww!!! She found your thread, Silenus! Now that’s romantic!
You do realize, deesiresjohn, that now he can’t use any of these 
.
Curses! Foiled again!
Love you, boo.
Maybe I can’t use any of these ideas as posted, but with a little paint, and a bit of filing on the serial numbers, I might be able to come up with something. Keep those stories coming! 
Awww. I can’t even talk my guy into joining the Dope. 
Damn, I’ve never done anything romantic.
But I think the most romantic thing ever done for me was when I was in college. I’d been friends with my boyfriend for years, and we’d only barely started dating. At some point in the ages we’d known each other, “Time In A Bottle” played on the radio and I ahhed over it as one of my favorite songs. His own favorite I still remember, but I don’t remember the name or the band except that the band was one of those that toured Renfairs and I believe one of its members died in a car wreck.
ANYHOW.
One day he gave me a mix tape – he’s always made the best ones – and I discovered both of those songs on there. He’d remembered an offhand comment I made YEARS ago and gave it to me. He’s always been good like that. Even though we’ve not been dating for three years or so, he still seems to always know the perfect thing.
We’ll go down to the bridge
listen to the music playing
underneath the evening skies
I’ll wipe the tears from your eyes
And you can wear my coat
To break the river breezes blowing
Underneath the evening skies
I only want to dry your eyes
I hand wrote a book for my wife’s 40th birthday. Each page was one little illustrative anecdote about her explaining why I loved and admired her. Each page had a photo of her doing something related to the story on the page. I had the pages copied and bound. At her birthday party everyone received a copy but in return I made them each give a little speech about something “only they” knew about her. Quite a hoot.
I hope I remember this right.
My wife was born on her mom’s 36th birthday. I went to the florist to send a dozen red roses to her on her birthday, and on impulse, I sent another dozen to her mom. I wrote in a card, “Thank you for raising this wonderful, loving woman I married. And, hey, you’re a pretty classy dame yourself !” Both women thought I was wonderful. However, the MIL’s roses were delivered first, and she called my wife to gush about it. Mrs. Nott said, “Hey, where’s mine?”
My father-in-law was a little miffed that I had upstaged him. Maybe that’s why they went on that cruise.
Going through a rough patch in my life a few years ago, we were flat broke headed into Christmas. There was an understanding that presents just weren’t going to be. Not for me, not for my wife, just for our little girl - and that, very little. (As mentioned in another thread, we’re pretty thrifty and don’t spend outside available income.)
On Christmas Eve, however, Santa was able to open up a Visa account, buy a budgeted $350 worth of gifts, cancel the card, and take the presents to Santa’s office for wrapping (this all occurred in a five hour period). As my wife fell asleep, I told her that I was going to the office for a few hours, to “wrap up a few things” (pun intended), went there and, well, I did actually work for a few hours, but around two in the morning I decided to knock off for the night and came home.
Laura woke up around 6:15, still dark out. She had a few presents (one for me, one for her (my poor wife was convinced she wasn’t getting anything for Christmas!) that she had put out before she went to sleep, but, in her own words, she “saw all these shadows that weren’t there the night before… so I didn’t turn on the lights for fear that they would disappear.” She made her coffee before she determined that the shadows were real. that she wasn’t dreaming it.
She cried, of course, for that’s what I wanted, a happy surprise. We filmed that Christmas with a camera bought in more prosperous times, Laura and I opening our presents first with Sophie’s help. By the time we were done with our few things, our 14-month old was an old hand at this unwrapping business and was ready to tear into her presents, unassisted.
In our family, there was always The Present. You didn’t know what it was, but generally when the gifts were given, the final gift was always the Big One. Get an Atari 2600 for Christmas? It’s the last present opened, guaranteed.
When Sophie opened her singing Barney doll, she was so excited that she started dancing and vibrating, her eyes bright, voice squealing (a year ago, as we were watching the tape, we realized that she was constantly squealing “What is it?” while she was opening the presents, but in real life we had absolutely no idea that she was speaking. Sophie never spoke in mere words - she’s a child who started with the sentence and went from there. But I digress). When I showed her how to squeeze his tummy to get him to sing, it was like the child was having an epiphany - and she probably was.
Laura’s Big Present was a weekend (well, Saturday night) away from Sophie, just her and me, going to movies and dinner, enjoying some peace and rest. The ability to sleep in on Sunday and lie in bed reading the NYT was very welcome for the first time in 15 months.
Sophie still has that Barney doll… as a matter of fact, it now sits on a shelf in her room, a prize collection in her stuffed animals, actually being physically replaced with another Barney doll, exactly the same. That Barney doll is achieving near-mythic status in our family.
The reason why is another romantic story…
Things were looking up a few months later… the business had its first clients, money was coming in, things were easing a little bit. I had a birthday in late March, Laura has a birthday in late April.
Laura, being a stay at home mother, has been watching more TV than usual. She has decided to give this “Buffy” show a whirl. She fell… and fell hard. She finally insisted that I watch the show, and I, too, find it to be excellent… for TV. (Yeah, I’m a bit snobbish that way. To each his own and all that…).
Well, there’s a Buffy convention (Vulkon) in Cleveland. A potential client was in Cleveland, waiting to be paid a visit. I was also formulating a plan to take over a company and those plans, too, led me to Cleveland.
We had a blast. Since Laura is the big fan of the show, I gladly took Sophie duty for the entire weekend (my business meeting was on the following Tuesday, so no worries about schedule conflicts) while Laura went and did whatever… shopping, panels/workshops, stuff like that. We took Sophie to a couple of kid oriented things, but Laura didn’t stay for long, having the rest of the convention to go to, and I didn’t either - I’m 10 miles from a Great Lake, I’m taking my daughter and seeing the thing.
So anyway, on Saturday it was James Marster’s turn…
wait.
Ilyari Limon. The girl who played Kennedy? Easily my favorite character on the show for she stopped her entire enterouge (sp) so she could play peek-a-boo with my little girl. Sophie was just laughing at her, having a good time, and Miss Limon was eating it up, finally insisting to the official photographer to have her picture made with Sophie. We got a few shots with our own camera as well.
Sophie’s mom just ate that shit up. So did Dad, I can tell you.
Anyway, James Marsters is on, doing his Q&A, autograph session following. Sophie and I are taking a nap after watching Scooby Doo (“Buddy, dadda! Buddy!”) and when we wake up we head on down. Mom is fairly late in line, the thing was delayed a bit, so we joined her and chatted.
Now they’re playing music that is apparently from his (Marsters) band when Sophie just starts dancing to it - sticking her little arms out, bouncing up and down, just being a little girl. Well, Marsters noticed, and when we got up to him, he insisted on signing “the dancing baby’s Barney doll.” Well, being the gracious people that we are, we allowed him to do so.
Laura had a great time, I made a successful presentation to the potential client, and I was able to take over the company. The first two turned out well, the last was the worst decision of my life. All in all, it was a helluva trip. 
For romance, what could possibly top shooting President Reagan?
GF at the time worked in the mall. I hid behind a kiosk several stores away. I gave a rose to some guy walking by and asked him to give it to her and say, “This is for you.” Over the course of 4 hours I did this 12 times with 12 guys, each time watching from behind the kiosk as she popped out of the store looking up and down the hall. Finally, I entered the store with a second dozen roses.
It worked. Mrs. Call and I have done some romantic things too, mind you, but that event stands out in my memory - esp. for that look in her eyes of pure unrestrained “wow.”
Before I left for Navy boot camp I promised my girlfriend I would come back in 4 1/2 years and ask her to marry me. We stayed BF/GF for about two years. With her away to school and me sailing halfway around the world we grew up in different directions and broke up. We strayed great friends (and still are many years later.)
4 1/2 years later she graduated, and that summer we were both home. My parents had in inground pool, beautiful patio and a large flower garden. On a nice summer evening we were alone with oldies playing on the jukebox. I started walking and talking, telling her how much she ment to me over the years. I was snipping away among my mothers roses collecting a huge bunch.
Her eyes welled up with realization of what I was doing when I walked over to her. I went down on one knee and fufilled my promise. I didn’t let her answer (knowing it would be no) just swooped her up and started dancing to the music.