Dogs and Diamonds

I was in Abercrombie & Fitch the other day. If you've ever met me, you know I have no business being in one of these stores and I assure you, I wasn't too happy being there.
I was doing some investigating for a paper I'm writing. I'm sure you won't believe that, but it's the truth nevertheless.
I mean c'mon, what other reason could I have for sifting through a store employing only the most attractive teenagers in the area, all of whom are at my every beck and call?
There. That explanation should assuage all doubt that I was only there for business.
But that business made me realize that I'm absolutely no longer part of the college quirk anymore.
I just can't fight it.
It's time to save money and invest it.
It's time to find a career and build it.
It's time to woo a girl and wed it... uh, her.

I fear the ring.

Is there anything more immasculating than the thought of purchasing a wedding ring? Every rule has its exceptions but, by-and-large, those who get married are rarely financially secure. The thought of a large diamond purchase looms largely over my head like impending doom.
Most women say that the size of the ring doesn't matter. That the love represented by it is what matters. I've heard girls say this to fiancees before. On the flp side, I've heard many women, amongst themselves, away from the sensitive ears of their male counterparts, speak quite boastfully and gluttonously about the size of the diamond on their finger.
The ring means something. Maybe not everything, but way more than nothing.
Somewhere along the way, our culture of conspicuous consumption got the better of us - all of us.
It would be well within my style to write an entire blog about how silly and dumb the whole diamond ring phenomena is in our culture. I could do it, but I'm not going to. And I'm not going to because I am a consumer of this phenomena.
I completely buy into the bill of sale stipulating the importance of engagement, wedding and anniversary rings.
DeBeers tells me I don't love her unless I spend half-a-year's salary on something that fits her finger. Jared insists she deserves what eight years as a student and AmeriCorps volunteer (along with an impending career in the newsmedia) dictates I'm going to struggle to afford. And correct me if I'm wrong, but according to Kay Jewelers, I'm gonna have to offer up one of their products before I can even get a kiss from my wife! Why must every kiss begin with them?
That's hardly fair.

People are getting slaughtered in Africa over these damn things. Which is not only troubling moralistically, but translates into higher prices for something that isn't technically worth the price I'm paying.
More than a third of the cost to put a respectable ring on my wife's finger (assuming I get married before prices hop even higher) will be inflated by the death of diamond raiders.
What do corpses and the love I have for my wife have in common?
You guessed it. And they're a girl's best friend too.

Men get dogs.

Diamonds are a girls best friend and man's best friend is a damn dog? What does it cost to get a dog? Like $250 bucks? Maybe $300? I'm not talking a pure-bred showdog, I'm talkin' a mutt. I'm talking about a damn bassett hound.
The kind Elvis might sing to.
It doesn't take five months salary to buy a bassett hound. And I'm pretty sure no one overseas has ever been eradicated trying to procure a terrier.
But dogs have about a 10-20 year lifespan and Zales will be the first to remind us that "diamonds are forever."

I hear 'em.
Like I said, I'm not wagging my finger at anyone more than I'm wagging it at myself. Men buy Ferrarri's to make up for various shortcomings (although I believe that to be a myth), why shouldn't women carry their worth or their man's worth around on their second smallest finger? I want nothing less for my fiancee/wife than the very best. I would be embarrassed for myself and for her if she had anything less than exactly what she desired. Because even if she didn't care, many others out there would.

I was nine-years-old when Nike Air Jordan's became extremely popular. So popular in fact, that a size 6.5 shoe yielded a $100 price tag. My mom, up until that point, hadn't spent more than $25 on shoes for me.
But everyone had a version of these shoes (especially in Chicago, where Michael Jordan was more recognizable than the President of the United States) and I got made fun of for wearing L.A. Gears.
Do you remember L.A. Gears? Maybe, in an ironic sort of way.
Do you remember Air Jordans? Hell yes you do.
I begged and I begged and I begged, and in a rare instance of my mother caving in to constant griping, I got my first pair of Air Jordans.
Now, if this were some bullshitter's blog you were reading, you'd probably read that they didn't improve anyone's basketball skills or that Air Jordans were no more comfortable than a pair of $15 Chuck Taylor's and that the Nikes only lasted two months before falling apart.
But I'm not that bullshitter.
I got picked for the schoolyard teams because I had the Jordans. Touching the ball was better than not touching the ball and by that rationale, yeah... those Goddamn shoes made me a better basketball player. And Chuck Taylors hurt my feet as a little kid; gave me awful blisters. And I wore those black and red Nikes for damn near three years, an unheard of amount of time for a growing child to cling to a pair of sneakers.
I loved those shoes and they made my life better.
Not because the shoes themselves were better, but because the people around me afforded me a better life because I wore them.

And my wife might not care about rings or diamonds, but a large majority of the people she will come in contact with are going to care. They're also going to judge both her and me after they do what every single woman on earth does after someone announces that they're getting married. They say...
(Say it with me folks) "Let me see that rock!"
And no one wants to hold out their finger for a gaggle full of jealous, judgmental women to stand around commenting that the ring is "quaint" or "darling".
"Quaint" is the same as a woman saying, "Oh, your husband must not be very good in bed." "Darling" is the verbal equivalent to "Poor girl, must be settling for fear of dying alone."
I don't want that for my wife.

I've been utterly propagandized. I admit it. And I'm not alone.
Show me a petition to outlaw diamond purchases for wedding rings, I'll sign it. Create a mandate enforcing the exchange of awesome t-shirts instead of rings on wedding days and I'll vocally support the cause. Until then... I'm saving for a ring despite having neither a fiancee nor a wedding date in my immediate future.

But there is an out. There's one escape I've concocted and I pray it works in my favor.
Tradition: the great equalizer.
If I can inherit an antique ring from my grandmother - or better yet, a great grandmother - then I can forgo the ring dilemma.
If it's passed down from generation to generation, it holds just as much cache as a muti-karat* diamond ring. And when those fictionalized, manipulative bitches stare at my make-believe fiancee's wedding ring someday, she can proudly hold her head high and tell them she's wearing an antique ring from the Mesazoic Era (or whenever).
The fictional shrews won't know what to make of that. It'll be great. I won't have to start a drug cartel in order to finance a symbol of the devotion to my wife and she can have a kickass vintage ring.
And although I'm not as educated on wedding rings as I am on t-shirts, I can tell you that I'd take a vintage tee over an expensive brand-name shirt any day of the week, no matter what the Solomon Bros., Tiffany and Co., or Abercrombie & Fitch try to tell me**.


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* Do you like how I used the term "multi-karat"? Can you tell I haven't got a firm grasp on how many karats is exceptional? I'm just happy I spelled karat correctly.

** Okay, I understand that Abercrombie & Fitch don't really have anything to do with the diamond trade, but I really hate them and wanted to take them out one last time before I ended this blog.