Diamonds are forever

There is nothing more convincing of your love for your betrothed than buying an outrageously expensive engagement ring. Buying a big, gaudy sparkling piece of metal with enormous diamonds in it allows everyone to measure your love unequivocally in cold hard cash. As one young woman with such a ring once told me, “I’m worth it.” Thus, I determined she was worth about $5,800 or at least one good saddle-broke horse.

Nowadays people can’t afford such overt expressions of their love. Well, they probably could, but when a marriage is only expected to last until a year after the honeymoon, why spend a whole month’s pay on someone who is just going to hawk the ring in a few months to pay for a divorce lawyer. 

Still, it is nice to have that big diamond displayed on the second finger to the left of the nose-picking finger. Fortunately, people are smarter and more practical these days, and they have figured out how to have that big precious chunk of ice without springing for the full cost of a traditional engagement ring.

Bah! Who needs tradition when you can have all that bling on the cheap by just embedding that sucker directly into your beloved’s finger? It is cheaper AND more practical. Engagement rings tend to get lost in the sink or in the toilet or when left on a motel nightstand somewhere. But, once that thing is anchored firmly into someone’s skin, you never have to worry about losing it.

I’m not sure how you present an engagement ring piercing stud when you’re proposing. I guess you can fall to your knee and when your beloved presents his or her hand, you can just pin their arm under your armpit and then jam that sucker in with a rivet gun. Or maybe, when you open the ring box, it will include a coupon to have it installed at the local tattoo parlor. Totally romantic in either case.  

However, if having a precious gem embedded in your finger is still too traditional in your mind, you can opt to get matching ring finger tattoos. Ring tattoos are even more “forever” than engagement piercings. A piercing could arguably still be pulled free with the help of a bottle of Jack and a good pair of plyers, but ink is forever. Ring tatts aren’t at all tacky looking or make people think that you got married in prison. Plus, if you want to hide the fact that you’re married, you can just cover it up with a band-aid.

Unfortunately, in some cultures even ring tattoos are removable. Supposedly, the women of some Indian tribes used to have a tradition of removing a finger joint after they lost a husband. Then they would dangle the finger in a tree over the corpse. It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “giving your ex-husband the finger.”

I guess this would be a good thing to do if you decide that the tattoo ink on your finger is more “forever” than the actual marriage. Just lop the finger off, and you’re a free man or woman. This trend would really cut down on the guessing game when you’re looking for a potential mate at the local saloon. Guys on the hunt would just have to look for the chicks with freshly amputated fingers. By the same criteria, a lady with a well-healed finger stump probably has something wrong with her.

Hmmmm. There seems to be something wrong with this new engagement ring idea, but I just can’t seem to put my finger on it.