Rings and Things
I am in a coffee shop and the four men at the table across from me have repeatedly grabbed my attention. The three middle-aged (perhaps on the line of retirement) men and one young man are discussing relationships and rings.
Older man 1: …Save yourself a lot of money. I will tell you what to do. You get the grandmother’s ring and change the setting around.
Young man: What why would grandmother give the ring?
Oder man 2: Which grandmother?
Older man 1: Her grandmother, when she is deceased.
Young man: And if the grandmother is still alive?
Older man 2: So is the grandmother scheduled for deceasedom sometime mid-July?
Young man: So your plan involves me knocking off the grandmother?!
The thing is, things are different with my generation. It is not like that anymore with rings. It is not a surprise. They look online and know all about these things. They pick them out for themselves. It is a sport! And you’ve got to get her the ring that she wants or else she is not marrying you!
Older man 1: Well, you’ve got to start working her now…
Older man 2: He (younger guy) is right. I started looking with $5,000.00 and ended up -$15,000.00.
Older man 1: The price of gold is going up. So sell it to her that way. Explain that she can have a large gold ring rather than diamonds. She will get a large ring and you will still save a ton of money.
Older man 2: ::smirking:: And then when her grandmother dies she can put the diamonds in the large ring?
The other older man didn’t say much of anything during all of this. The conversation continued until it got to the point where the two talking older man began advising the young man to tell the girl about what his priorities really were. He should not devote himself to a girl while still in college.
Older man 2: “I remember the guys devoted to relationships in college… all the lover boys never really got anywhere.”
Older man 1: Right. They turn into 65-year-old beach bums.
At this point the two older men are so busy agreeing with each other that they don’t notice what I am pretty sure is the young man texting underneath the table. I watch as he slides his phone into his pocket, and I hope that he is ignoring the advice of the older men I imagine to have no greater fulfillment in life than in advising young men to follow in their steps and live for business rather than family.
This is hilarious mostly because I find it sad. And, given my views, I shouldn’t really. I am generally opposed to the mass stupidity associated with diamonds. They aren’t a girl’s best friend. They are De Beers best friend. And yet I hate it when men cannot accept something simply because it is of value to their partners. Hey, if diamonds=love for her, then either accept it and give her many valuable diamonds, or else find someone else a little less Lily Allenesque!
The second problem is that I am generally opposed to super-young marriage. And, in New England, engagement during college counts as super-young, particularly for boys men. But why on earth would you advise a young man– who is clearly serious about both work and his relationship– to break up simply so that he could be more free for work?
I have got to side with young love on this one: even if it does come in the form of needing diamonds for validation.
What say you?
Personally, I’m an advocate of young love, early marriage, and eco-friendly rings (meaning my diamond will be a re-purposingof a family ring).
How hilarious – I love evesdropping on conversations. I say buy a ring overseas … but then for most Americans that’s not an option. My ring is an “antique”, which really just means it was bought second-hand, but I love it, and prefer something affordable!
I got married young… a month after graduating from college. My husband was starting his senior year of college. I almost felt apologetic about it because I really don’t think getting married young is generally a good idea. Most of the time I’d advise people to take their time, but then it depends on the person. For what reason do they want to get married so young? Most people still have plenty of independant adventuring to do before they are ready to settle down. And the bottom line is simple that the lack of life experience brings a lack of wisdom in making such a huge choice in life.
For us, though, it really has been great, and my discomfort with our young age has passed as I am increasingly reaffirmed that I really did make a great choice of a man. We do our young adventuring together, and that’s super fun. It helps that we both have great families that showed us great examples of marriage.
Yes! I am so glad for someone who seems to share my position. Discussion and variety is great, but it can be hard to explain what it is like to get married young even when you don’t generally think that it is a good idea. And “young adventuring together” is fabulous.
I’m all for marrying young- We did. I think it is great for some people- but obviously not so great for others. Isn’t that true for almost every life decision?
Indeed. I am all for marrying young and all against it.
Oh that was great! I needed a good laugh.
I do agree that you can “smell” wafts of truth, bits of the eternity set in the hearts of men that still have not been drawn to salvation. So what is the difference between universalism and a host of denominations with nothing in common?
I guess I would say that the denominations do have something in common, and I think that’s what Lewis gets at when he speaks of the formidible unity of Christianity to outsiders, despite the division. I don’t think he’s saying that divisions are something we can ignore, I think he’s saying they shouldn’t cause despair, because Christ is present in all of them, and the gospel is what gives it all unity. I’d go back a few posts to when I wrote about orthodoxy – it encourages me to understand that the basic orthodox gospel message has been what holds the church together throughout many ages and many changes and many denominations.