YOU'RE WHAT?

My roommate and his girlfriend smiled as the room started to spin. Engaged? As in, engaged to be married? No, if you were telling the truth, you'd be wearing a...hey, is that a new ring? Wow! Let me see that!

Two hours later, it had sunk in. My roommate and his "fiancee" had agreed to tie the knot, or, if you prefer, get hitched. They had chosen to zip the proverbial sleeping bags of their life together. Sure, they had dated for two years. But 60 more? And, dare I say it, children?

I aged about 30 years in those two hours.

And I began to feel guilty. My roommate makes a decision that will bring him years of happiness and fulfillment, a decision that may be the most important he will ever make in his life, a decision the magnitude of which I cannot fathom, and I say, "You're what?"

Well, enough of that, I decided. The next time a couple randomly tells me they are engaged, I'll be prepared to unleash a response that they'll never forget.

My first inclination was to memorize some wondrous quotations about marriage that they could cherish for years. I needed to find a pity saying that would make me sound like a witty, well-read, caring and sensitive person.

I began flipping through Bartlett's.

"Times are changed with him who marries," quoth Robert Louis Stevenson. There are no more bypath meadows, where you may innocently linger, but the road lies long and straight and dusty to the grave."

I kept flipping. Perhaps something more classical.

Miguel Cervantes: "Marriage is a noose."

John Seldon: "Marriage is a desparate thing."

William Shakespeare: "A young man married is a man that's marred."

It slowly dawned on me that unless I mumbled under my breath, the famous quotation concept was leading nowhere. Time for Plan B: a response to an engagement announcement so understated and realistic that is was sure to be a hit. Rather than recoil in surprise and shock, I would announce an immediate prophecy of the couple's life prospects 30 years down the road.

I turned to the Statistical Abstract. Working late nights to the relentless sounds of Frank Sinatra's "Love and Marriage," I compiled a portrait of the average American couple:

2.4 children.

$140,000 mortgage.

18.6 marital spats per year.

50 percent divorce rate.

It wasn't a pretty portrait. "You're what?" wasn't looking so bad after all.

As a last gasp attempt, I decided to turn inward. Facing a full-length mirror, I asked myself: What would I want someone to say to me if I said I was engaged?

I thought. I stared. I thought some more. After a very long period of thinking, I determined that I wasn't ready to get engaged.

Time was running out. All around me I began to hear rumors of seniors dropping out of the singles market and choosing the path of wedded bliss. What was I going to do when someone else told me The News?

Then it dawned on me. Perhaps my quest for the perfect response derived more from my own uncertainty than from my kind-heartedness. It's difficult to be sure that a college senior--any college senior--can make a decision that can last a lifetime. To compensate for my uncertainty, I was looking for the ever-elusive "right thing" to say.

Perhaps, in other words, I should have been searching for that perfect non-verbal signal. Maybe a hearty handshake. Or a warm hug and a sigh. An interpretive dance?