ACCOUNTANT BY DAY

Tuesday when I showed up for work, my gamer coworker came over to my cube and told me that her sister found an engagement ring in a parking lot or somewhere and they couldn’t find who it belonged to and that it was really small and wouldn’t fit anybody at their house and wouldn’t I try it on? I tried it on and she was impressed because it fit perfectly. “You should keep it! This was meant to be!” she said.

“I…it’s not expensive, is it?” I asked.

“No, you can tell it’s fairly cheap, but I thought it would be nice for you to have something to wear, since you guys didn’t want to spend the money right now,” she said. Then she gave me the matching wedding band.

This was probably about the most thoughtful and unexpected thing that a coworker had ever done for me. I would have hugged her, except I was full of cold germs and didn’t want to infect her as a sign of my gratitude. Last week she told me that I am one of her all-time favorite coworkers. I guess she really meant it!

I felt a little odd about accepting a ring from a coworker, but after I thought about it I decided that it wasn’t weird to be given a ring by someone who was not my boyfriend, only that it was a bit weird for that person to be a coworker. We had decided to postpone the whole ring thing until we had more money, since we might have to buy a new stove this year. I told my coworker I didn’t know if I should accept it, and she said that they didn’t have any use for it at their house, and it didn’t cost a thing, so she’d just as soon it get some use.

I wrote her a thank you card today. I would have done it sooner, but I was sick all week and also I didn’t know what exactly to say. I wrote, “[Gamer coworker], I never expected to have the opportunity to say this to a coworker, but thank you for the beautiful engagement ring.” I wrote some stuff about thanks for thinking of me and I really appreciated the consideration she put into it.

I guess I’ll get them cleaned up sometime soon. I’m curious whether the stone is a real diamond. With as small as it is, I kind of think maybe it could be. Most imitation diamonds or cubic zirconia can afford to be a little bigger. The thing that surprises me most is how much I like having a ring to wear, even though I’m not a very ostentatious person and I wouldn’t go around showing it off anyhow. I thought that it didn’t really matter to me, and now I find I sort of like it.

Well, we surprise ourselves all the time.

Ha, ha! What would my old coworkers think if they knew someone at my new work liked me enough to give me a diamond ring she found?