Dude Proposes to Girlfriend by Writing Adorable Children's Book

The days when you could just kneel down and display a rock in a box and call it a proposal have been over for a long, long time. They’re so over that this story of a man who wrote and illustrated a children’s book, planted it in a library, had his girlfriend “stumble across it” and read it to him and then proposed, all while a photographer surreptitiously captured the whole thing, appears relatively tame in the grand scheme of the Wedding Industrial Complex.

Here’s the story, which the soon-to-be groom posted on Reddit:

A Tall Tale

There once was a gorilla That fell for a giraffe. She surprised him by how much She could make him laugh.

The two, you see, Were from different worlds Their first date, so nervous,
He’d certainly hurl.

In spite of their differences,
It was love at first sight. His feelings grew quickly, His heart took to flight.

The gorilla, his life, Unpolished and scattered Now refined and focused On those things that matter.

There were simply no words For how lucky he’d gotten. Without her by his side Life would surely be rotten.

It’s hard to believe Just how happy they were. He could not imagine Even one day without her.

So he got on one knee And uttered the plea: “My dearest giraffe, Will you marry me?”

He felt his heart beating Right out of his chest. He could do nothing but wait And hope she’d say YES.

When she finally answered He could not stop grinning Because he knew, in his heart, This was just The Beginning!

In one comment on Reddit, he says that it worked well because “I told her I wanted to wine and done her a few weeks ago. [Ed: Assuming that’s a typo, though getting wined and done is probably many people’s idea of a good night.] I then rented some books from the library early that week with the due date on the proposal day. So we had to go drop the books off before dinner.”