You want to marry Cross-Eyed Danielle, but Cross-Eyed Danielle is going to jail for a billion-dollar fraud after cooking the books at her investment firm to hide losses and keep the stock price at a record high. She awarded herself yearly bonuses in the tens of millions, and the public wants to see her locked up and left to rot.
At her sentencing, when the judge asks anyone in the courtroom if they have anything they’d like to say, which happens all the time, you stand up and tell the judge, “I love Cross-Eyed Danielle, your honor. And if you let her off without a prison sentence, I will marry her.”
The judge will say, “It’s the law that convicted felons can avoid prison if they have have someone to marry them. Cross-Eyed Danielle, do you accept this man’s proposal of marriage?”
Cross-Eyed Danielle looks you up and down.
“I guess,” she says.
“Then I have no choice but to let you off the hook,” the judge says.
You and Cross-Eyed Danielle have a moderately happy marriage, despite all the people throwing bricks through your windows and spray painting your house with accusations of Cross-Eyed Danielle having bankrupted their pensions. And she often gets angry that she had to marry you just to stay out of jail, seeing as you’re so much less intelligent and successful than her, and she’s earned (and stolen) millions as a banker when you’ve never earned more than $30K a year.
“But my eyes work,” you always remind her.
She concedes this. “Your eyes do work,” she says. “I guess that evens things out.”
Happy Cross-Eyed Danielle Day!
