A tale of the Ring

Most people who go out ring hunter have it a little easier. Know the girl you're going to buy for and then go out and look through a few shops some even cheat and take their fiancé with them. Well, that works great if you're in the same City as your fiancé, but this is not the case for me. As a Military man I have been deployed to many different countries, but this tale takes place whilst I was out in the Desert of Iraq.

In mid 2005, my unit was called to Iraq, my first combat tour, but that is not what I'm here to talk about. But I did have to leave the woman I love, though she was scheduled to depart on her own adventure into the Army. Spending time emailing, calling back and forth with an extensive pile of letters and packages, which kept everyone jealous of me. During one of our calls, Lisa did confide in me that she had decided not to join the Army, but wanted to stay with me. (YAY)

So now being stuck in Iraq and planning to get engaged I needed to get a ring. Lots of women would say it's romantic getting a ring from a foreign country, but lucky for me, my girl likes the simple things in life, Also I just couldn't run down town to the local jeweler. So, I took to what know, the internet.

Now, during my first tour, the internet was not like sitting in you room with a laptop computer on your lap, no it was walking a mile down the road to a large tent filled with phones and about a dozen computers with a small line of soldiers waiting to get on. Once you login you have about 30 minutes to use the computer and if you run out of time, it's to the back of the line for you. Since I only had one mission, it was easy, starting with the best place to look for engagement ring I went onto the Macy jewelry website and three pages I found a lovely little ring with a blue sapphire stone, marking the page I carried on. Getting to page 10 with nothing else catching my eye, I went back to page three and clicked on the little sapphire ring.

With the ring picked out and ordered I wanted to make sure it got home safely, so I decided to have it shipped to my brother's house in Barstow California. So, who would have guessed I would run into any other problems? Since I only get on the internet every few days, I decided to check my account, never would have expected to have my account lower than expected. Checking the account, I saw that Macy's jewelry had double charged me for the ring.

"What the hell?" Now having to go back and get ready for my shift, I have to figure out a way to get back tomorrow to fix this error. Lucky for me all it took was a quick plea to my section leader about my bank account and I was cleared.

The next evening. Being smart, the night before I signed off the computer after I found a problem, I made sure to write down the number to Macy's Jewelry. Saved me at least forty-five minutes of wait time, all I had to do was sign up for a phone. Same concept applies for the phone as a computer, stand in line wait, only 30 min available.

The conversation.

"Hello thank you for calling Macy's Jewelry, my name is _______"

"Yes, hello, my name is Robert Davis. I am a deployed service member in the Middle East."

"Oh, God"

"Excuse me?"

"Every month I get a poor sappy story from some soldiers overseas trying to call in to get a discount."

BOOOOM! Close mortar attack. Shakes the ground.

"Oh my, what was that? The teller asks"

Now for a brief moment, all I can think about here is please don't let me lose connection, because if I do, I'll have to start the whole process over. Now most may wonder why if a mortar attack happens, why we don't run for the bunkers? T.V. is overrated and after a few months in Country, you just got used to it.

"Inbound"

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

"And that?"

"Outbound"

"OK, I'm sorry. What can I help you with today?"

Yes, after about 10 min of clicking on her computer, she found the double charge and fixed it, would only be a few days before the money was put back in the account. Hallelujah!

Let's skip forward a few months. Mid Feb. coming home. Since Lisa was my welcome home party, I knew how I was going to pop the question, all I needed was the ring. You read earlier that to make life easy I had the ring sent to my brother's house; this was to keep it out of range of Lisa since she was always at my parents' house. No accidental oops, she saw the ring.

Set up, just before flying out of Kuwait I called my mom and had her get the ring from Paul, my older brother and put into a folded-up piece of paper and put it in an envelope, put my name and address on it with a stamp. Adding it to all my other mail collected over the last few months, my mom gave the stack to Lisa to bring down with her and give to me. You can kind of see where this is going.

Fast forward again to morning after I got home, no need to tell you what went on that night.

Just lying-in bed in our hotel room, talking about what's going to be happening now. I suddenly ask for the stack of mail I knew Mom had sent down. Going through them one by one, most stuff import things like Insurance or getting phone reconnected. About the fourth one in I hand the envelope Mom had written out to Lisa and ask her to open it, a bit confused she does. Unfolding the paper with ring on it, I ask the question. "Will you Marry me?"

After saying yes, Lisa asked me how I had gotten the ring, since she knew I had it mailed home. I had told her it was delivered with the rest of the mail by her.

I got really lucky because one, she said yes and two, the ring was perfectly fit to her finger and it was just a simple ring and style she liked. This tale is being told almost Sixteen years later.