Hey, Texas! How do we feel about public marriage proposal stunts? Do we kinda hate them? They’re the worst, right? I mean, sometimes somebody talks Tom Cruise into proposing to his girlfriend for him on live TV, and we all go, “Aww, Tom Cruise still possesses some shred of humanity,” and we acknowledge the cuteness of it before going back to our day. But often elaborate stunts stop being sweet (and occasionally start being illegal) the more we think about them.
This week Galveston police officer Gregory Parris popped the question to his girlfriend Sara Wolff in a unique, headlining-making way: By having one of his fellow officers pull her over on suspicion of driving with a broken taillight. Then the officer told her that she had outstanding warrants and would be going to jail. Another police car showed up, and—surprise!—Wolff wasn’t going to jail, Wolff was getting engaged! As KHOU reports:
He wasn’t catching a criminal. He was pulling over the love of his life. He watched from his squad car as another officer turned on his sirens and pulled over Sara Wolff. It was all part of an elaborate plan by Ofc. Parris and Galveston Police.
“They both deserve Academy Awards,” said Wolff.
When Wolff looked up, she knew she was getting pulled over, but didn’t know why. When the officer came to her window, he told her she had a broken tail light.
Dash cam video captures what happened next. With a straight face, the officer told her she had outstanding warrants. He asked her to get out of the car. A lieutenant shows up to sort through it all and calls Ofc. Parris to make his move.
“He said ‘do you want her in handcuffs?’, and I said ‘ no don’t put her in handcuffs’,” said Parris.
On the one hand: Awww! Everybody seems happy. On the other hand: Watch the video! Wolff starts crying when she thinks that she’s going to jail, which seems like a weird sort of fear to put into someone you love. So it’s a little strange to see the anchors on KHOU gush about the charming marriage proposal which involved, at the very least, an element of kinda cruel deception.
Not to mention that so many stunt proposals seem to put an inordinate amount of pressure on the woman being proposed to. If there are, say, 250 motorcyclists on I-10 or an entire crowd at an Astros game all expecting you to say “Yes,” it’s pretty hard to let them all down.
To be clear, there’s no reason to believe that Wolff was anything other than thrilled at the prospect of spending the rest of her life with Parris—she told KHOU that she “can’t imagine being proposed to any better than that.” Thankfully.
“She might have gone to jail otherwise,” said Parris, jokingly.
Even as a joke, it’s kind of weird when a marriage proposal involves the prospect of going to jail. But maybe that’s just cynicism: What do you think, Texas? Was Parris’ stunt proposal sweet or creepy?
