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For 20 seconds, she lived a dancer's worst nightmare—which then became a dream come true

Utah Jazz dancer Danielle Bush got lost mid-performance and had to improvise until she realized what was really happening.

Utah Jazz dancer Danielle Bush got the surprise of her life when her fellow dancers started doing a totally different routine.

It's a dancer's worst nightmare. You're in the middle of a performance you've rehearsed over and over when all of a sudden you forget what you're doing. Everyone else is in sync, and you're hopelessly out of step, trying desperately to not make it obvious that you're completely lost.

That's sort of what happened to Utah Jazz dancer Danielle Bush earlier this week during a basketball half-time performance. Bush didn't forget the routine, though—it just suddenly changed on her in the middle of it. The song, the routine, all of it. To her credit, Bush rallied, smiled and did her best to improvise, but it was clear she was lost. For a torturous 20 seconds, she tried to keep up—and then she figured out what was really going on.


What started out as a nightmare turned into a heartwarming surprise that the rest of her fellow dancers were in on.

Watch:

How can a video be so painful to watch and yet end up with such a happy ending? The poor girl was so confused until she actually heard what the song had been changed to—Bruno Mars' "Marry You"—and realized it had to have been changed for her.

According to KSL News, the proposal had been planned in secret since earlier in the month. Bush's boyfriend (now fiance) Brandon had asked Jazz Dancers director Ashley Kelson if it were possible to pop the question on the court.

"I wanted to make it big and special for her for sure," Kelson told the outlet. "Making it a part of the routine was so much fun."

Kelson scheduled Bush to be at a community event during a rehearsal where the other dancers learned the alternate routine. The team only had one practice to rehearse the proposal, and they pulled it off beautifully.

"It was an honor to plan with Brandon and be a part of their special moment and just proud of my team for keeping it a surprise," Kelson said. "It definitely was a team effort."

And it was definitely a proposal to remember. Congratulations, Danielle and Brandon!


This article originally appeared on 12.23.21

Dating as a single parent isn't easy. Just ask Cassandra Reschar.

"I have full custody of my daughter and very little 'me' time," she wrote on How He Asked. There are over 13 million parents in the U.S. just like her.

Then she met Grant Tribbett online, and the two hit it off big-time over the next couple of weeks, constantly trading messages and eventually phone calls.


Their relationship blossomed from there, and one day, six months or so into dating, Tribbett asked Reschar and her 5-year-old daughter, Adrianna, to come on a walk through the woods with him.

In the middle of the forest, on a small wooden footbridge, Tribbett dropped to one knee and asked Reschar to spend the rest of her life with him.

The proposal was a big surprise, but Tribbett had a few more tricks up his sleeve:

"As soon as he got down on one knee, my friend, who is a professional photographer (Mandi Gilliland), came out of hiding and captured one of the best moments of my life!" Reschar wrote.

[rebelmouse-image 19531894 dam="1" original_size="735x490" caption="All photos by Mandi Gilliland Photography, used with permission." expand=1]All photos by Mandi Gilliland Photography, used with permission.

Kids aren't usually invited along on romantic walks in the woods, but Tribbett wanted Adrianna to be there for an incredibly touching reason.

After getting the "Yes!" and sliding an engagement ring onto Reschar's finger, he turned to Adrianna and got back down on one knee.

"Adrianna, can I be your daddy?" he said.

"To promise to love and protect you for the rest of your life?"

He even offered her a small heart necklace.

As Reschar burst into happy tears, Adrianna could only muster a meek "thank you" at first.

"I finally get a Daddy, Mommy!" Adrianna finally yelled, according to her mom.

"I finally get a Daddy..."

The family's story is capturing hearts all across the internet. "He knew that my daughter was my world and that this wasn’t just a commitment between us but a commitment to our family," Reschar told the Huffington Post.

The photos are touching, but they also prove an important point: Most research has shown that parental makeup plays little to no role in a child's long-term well-being.

Meaning: There's no right or wrong way to make a family. What's important is that kids feel love and commitment from their parents, whether they be exes, gay, straight, step, or anything else.

Kudos to the happy couple and Adrianna for bringing this important message to the world.

A few months ago, with the help of his niece and nephews, Eugene Williams began working on a sign asking his boyfriend to marry him.

On May 23, he unveiled it in the most glorious way possible:

"Chris, will you marry me?" Photo by Disneyland/Eugene Williams. All photos used with permission.


"I quickly hid the sign away after the drop and when we exited the ride we walked to see our photo and he was shocked," Williams wrote on Reddit. "I got down on one knee and asked him to spend the rest of his life with me."

"He said, 'Yes,'" Williams confirmed.

Williams and Chris, who met just over a year ago, are huge Disneyland fans.

The pair, who are both from Southern California, have been going to the park once a month together ever since.

Photo by Eugene Williams.

Early in their relationship, Williams says, he learned that Splash Mountain was Chris' favorite ride, which gave him the idea for the sign and proposal.

"I remember hearing a girl saying 'OMG that’s so cute!' And then a few people clapped when I got down and proposed and he said yes," Williams says in an email interview.

But not everyone was thrilled by the surprise proposal.

Williams explained on Reddit that his mom, who hails from a traditional religious background, asked him not to post the photo on Facebook because she's "ashamed" of him and was worried her relatives would "gossip."

"I didn’t even receive a congratulations from my parents, so it was very heartbreaking for me," he says.

Instead, in a moment of anger, Williams posted the photo to Reddit, where it was up-voted thousands of times and received dozens of melt-your-heart compliments.

Williams, his niece, and nephews work on the sign. Photo by Eugene Williams.

"Holy ravioli this is amazing. Congrats to you two!" user jofnj wrote.

"Straight bro here ... y'all are a-god-damn-dorable. Congratulations and wishing you a lifetime of health and happiness together," raved redditor eminently_weird.

One commenter — a dad — even said the photo helped him understand his own son.

"As a middle aged straight guy who subscribes to this sub because my son is not quite sure of his sexuality and I want to keep an open mind, I am often blown away by the overwhelming warmth of love I see on this sub," user EINSTIEN420 explained. "I am legitimately sorry your mom can't feel the happiness that you have here. Shedding a No Homo manly tear for you right now and [congrats] to you and your partner."

Other commenters advised him to ignore his mom's request and celebrate: "Post it on Facebook. It's your happiness before others," user keveeeezy suggested.

The couple spent the rest of the day at the park, smiling, FaceTiming with Chris' family, and cuddling on the Haunted Mansion ride.

Photo by Eugene Williams.

"It was the most romantic time despite the ride being a haunted mansion!" he says.

Williams says he's excited that people are thrilled by the photo — but he's even more excited "about being with Chris and starting a family together."

"I'm just happy that we’re getting such a positive response from people," Williams says. "It makes me so happy to be able to share these positive messages with Chris."

"I did this all for him to have a lasting memory of our love."

President Trump wants to build a wall along the U.S./Mexico border. It's not actually him that's going to design and build it, though. As per usual for government projects, they're taking submissions from private contractors.

Each contractor puts forth various costs, designs, and ideas, which Trump was probably figuring would be stuff like wall shapes and structures or types of concrete.


But, well, not everyone did that.

Instead of a border wall, a group of designers has proposed a different take on the idea of a border altogether.

All images from Otra Nation. Used with permission.

The MADE Collective, a group of 14 planners, architects, and engineers, want to replace the idea of a wall with something the world's never seen before — turning the border into a kind shared utopia. They're calling their project Otra Nation.

The most visually striking aspect of their idea is to replace the big concrete wall concept with a sleek, sexy hyperloop.

Hyperloops are a kind of theoretical superfast train-in-a-tube, which would make traveling along the border quicker and easier than ever. Stops would stretch west from San Diego and Tijuana east to Brownsville and Matamoros on the very southern tip of Texas. Connections would also branch off to cities such as San Francisco, Sante Fe, Dallas, and Mexico City.

If the hyperloop matched the kinds of speed Elon Musk's take on the idea proposes, a person could travel the entire border in less than three hours.

That's already an amazingly ambitious idea, but buckle your seatbelts (do hyperloops have seatbelts?), it gets bigger.

To go along with the easier travel, Otra Nation would also include a regional ID card and tweaked border control laws, which would let people easily flow between the United States and Mexico.

Nature-lovers and green techies would get some goodies too. The plan would make the border a "zero-extraction" zone (meaning no mining or oil drilling), remove the 700 miles of fencing already there, restore natural areas like wetlands and forests, and install 90,000 square kilometers of solar panel stations, which if you don't know, is a whole hell of a lot of solar power.

But it gets even better. The most ambitious idea is who'd own this strip of land. Or, more precisely, who wouldn't own it.

While both nations would work together to build up the infrastructure, the area would be given a degree of autonomy. This would effectively turn the border into a shared, self-governing territory, what the MADE Collective is calling a "co-nation."

A co-nation. A little baby nation with the U.S. and Mexico as the proud parents. It'd be something we've never seen before and could change how we see international relations altogether.

Otra Nation currently has a petition on Change.org. If they get 250,000 signatures, they say they'll get the proposal hand-delivered to the presidents of both nations.

The MADE designers acknowledge the idea has a million-to-one shot, but they're serious about it.

The idea may seem a bit far-fetched, and it'll certainly require more schematics, legislation, and paperwork than their relatively brief proposal sets out.

But, well, it's estimated that Trump’s wall is going to end up costing more than $20 billion ($5 billion more than Otra Nation is asking for) and might not even work. If we're going to drop that much money on a grand idea, why not aim for something truly revolutionary?

People often say "build bridges, not walls." This would be one hell of a bridge.