Go Big or Go Home!

Wes pushes 'em all in.

"Wes," I said after he'd told me the whole story, "Can you please extract some of your pimp juice, place it in a vial and send it to me in the mail? You are the man."

Wes celebrating another successful sip of beer

The best thing about the news that Wes got engaged last weekend is that I will never have to stumble over saying his fiance's last name again. Lizzie Ferrer..i. Ferrer...a. Ferrer..uhhhhh. No matter how many times I'm corrected on it, I never feel fully confident that I'm saying it right. That's partly why I always called her "Wes' Lizzie" -- that, and because both Tom and I had girlfriends of the same name in college. Soon, though, it won't be Lizzie Ferrari. It will be Lizzie Petticrew. Lizzie "Push 'em" Petticrew.

Wes' self-adorned nickname is "Push 'em." Because he always pushes 'em in in poker. Or so he claims.

Anyone who was friends with me my first year in college will remember Wes. He's the guy whose fake photo of him and his "boys" from back home in Virginia Beach spawned the entire concept of www.newcollegeidentities.com.

Click here to read the story of how Wes became "Wes the Original Beach Kid."

I met him my first day of college. He was roommates with Tom. They both lived on my hall in Humphreys. The first thing I thought when I saw Wes was, "This guy looks like Rudy Ruettiger at age 40."

The real Rudy

"Biiiiitch," he would say about 30 times a day, "I RUN shit in VB!" VB is Virginia Beach, the 757, a part of the country where Michael Vick, Allen Iverson and Bruce Smith all hail from, but where Wes was the one who ran shit. He even grew up down the street from another guy that was on our hall that year, Washington Nationals third baseman Ryan Zimmerman, but Wes still ran shit. Zim wasn't the three-time national champion before age 16, after all, twice in body boarding, once in AAU basketball. That was Wes. No wonder Wes' AIM screen name was VaBeachHNIC. He ran shit.

Wes met a girl our first year named Lizzie. She also lived in Humphreys. Wes fell in love with her. She did not fall in love with him, at least not immediately. That could be because the first time they ever had a real conversation, it was when Wes was coming home from the police station, where he had spent the night after being arrested for doing something bad, I don't know. It involved drinking and being black out. You'll have to ask him for more details. The point is that Wes meets girl, Wes falls in love with girl, girl doesn't fall in love with Wes, but Wes and girl become friends, Wes sets goal to be more than friends, and by third year, Wes has prevailed.

Lizzie from Humphreys became "Wes' Lizzie," and four years later, still dating, they find themselves back in Charlottesville, for the Clemson-Virginia basketball game.

"I told her we had to go meet up with Ben at the chemistry building, so he could give us our tickets," Wes said Sunday night when he called to tell me about how it all went down.

"Where did you ask her?" I asked immediately, trying to cut to the chase. I'd known for months that he was trying to pop the question where it all began, at UVa, just like The Bob did when he asked my mom to marry him, but I didn't realize just how pimp his plans were until they'd already unfolded.

"Right in front of Humphreys."

"YES!" I screamed. "Yes, Wes."

"But it was hard to get her there because it was out of the way to the arena, and Lizzie was like, 'Why do we have to go all the way to the chemistry building? That's stupid. Why can't we just drive to the arena and park there and...' I was just like, 'Jeez, can you please shut up for two seconds?'"

Lizzie didn't realize that she was ruining Wes' plans. The chemistry building is right next to Humphreys, our old dorm, the place where Wes met girl, and fell in love with girl. It wasn't where girl fell in love with Wes, but it was gonna be where she said yes. She didn't know he'd bought a ring, and she didn't know that there were no Clemson tickets. But she knew it didn't make sense to go all the way to the chemistry building if they were trying to go to the game.

"I just want you to know," Wes said, as I heard Lizzie laughing in the background, "that you played a part in making it all go down perfectly." Me? "I told her that we had to go that way anyway because Bayless said he'd heard that they'd installed a permanent four square court at Old Dorms, and he thinks it's because of him, since he thinks he's the one who started four square."

I am the one who started four square. Or at least, I'm one of the four who started it at Old Dorms in 2002.

"So when we get to the benches outside of Humphreys, I asked her what her favorite memory of first year was."

It felt like a "Sleepless in Seattle" moment, as I drove in my car listening to this story of true love.

"And she said, 'That time you started a fire outside of the dorms and the fire department came...'"

The time Wes went middle school style after exams first year and lit all his notes on fire was not the answer he was looking for there.

"So I was like, 'How 'bout another memory?'" Lizzie was ruining his plans. "And she said, 'That time you were coming back from the police station..'"

Wes would probably describe that encounter as "the first time we talked," not "the time I was coming back from getting arrested," but that was the answer he was looking for, and he got down on his knee.

"And I just said, 'Bet you I can top that..'"

ALL IN. Wes went all in. In the most pimp fashion any of us from Humphreys will ever do it.

The best part? They went and scalped tickets to the Clemson game. And Virginia beat the No. 12 Tigers in overtime.

Now that was a good day for Push 'em. That's the way you run shit.