2008 Year in Review, #6: Woman misinterprets husband-to-be’s cries of “we’re going dancing!”

CHICAGO, IL — A local woman was saddened Tuesday after a case of confusion led her to mistakenly believe that her fiancee was planning on surprising her with dancing lessons prior to their forthcoming June wedding.

“For the last three days, my fiancée Dan has been saying, ‘We’re going dancing, we’re going dancing!’” said a sobbing Justine Gastby, 24, of the city’s north side. “I was so excited. Here’s Dan, signing us up for dance lessons before the wedding! I was so thrilled; I thought it was so romantic! But I guess we have different ideas of what it means to be romantic. And of what it means to ‘go dancing.’”

Apparently, Dan McDonough had been referring to his alma mater Austin Peay’s automatic bid to the NCAA tournament, clinched this week. “I was so happy about AP making it to the big dance, I couldn’t help it. I just kept talking about it. Is it my fault that Justine immediately assumed I was talking about the wedding? I mean, come on – everything isn’t about the wedding, you know?”

According to friends, though, Justine does assume that everything is about the wedding. She told SSNN that she had already chosen a preliminary list of 15 songs for the couple and their dance instructor to choose from as they began to try and find their perfect wedding song.

“I had some great songs on there,” Justine said. “I had ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow,’ I had ‘Beautiful Day,’ I even had that wonderful song ‘At Last.’ It was going to be great. I was so excited to go to dance class next Thursday. It was going to be one of the best nights of my life.”

Unfortunately, McDonough’s plans were quite different – on either Thursday or Friday night, the couple will be at the Gin Mill watching college basketball. And, of course, rooting for Austin Peay.

“This is going to be one of the best nights of our life,” Dan said. “I haven’t been this excited since Trenton Hassell graduated.”