The Engagement

I'm always taken a little aback when perfect strangers come up to me and start conversations about their personal thoughts and feelings. It's just a little weird. On the other hand, when those perfect strangers are children, I'm highly amused. You just never know what they'll say.

Recently I was browsing through a local retail establishment that can best be described as an acre of accessories. It is not to be believed. Mostly it consists of well made but extremely reasonably priced costume jewelry and it's all arranged by color, a concept that highly pleases me.

There is one section of this shop where you'll find rings only, and it was while I was browsing this section that a little girl struck up a conversation with me. She was diligently pouring over the "diamond" solitaires and pointing to one she said:

"I'm going to have my boyfriend buy that one for me for my engagement ring. I know it will have to be resized but that's OK. He told me that we're going to get married when we're seven. I really don't like the ring he gave me and he said that I could just throw it away when I outgrow it."

Then she held out her ringless left hand for me to see. "I know it doesn't look like I'm engaged, but really I am. You know, I have $29 with me. I think I'm just going to go ahead and buy that ring myself and give it to him to give to me."

At this point, my mind was reeling. At six she was obsessed with being engaged and even having the ring. A thousand questions began to run through my mind while she was talking. Is this normal behavior for a six year old girl? Are they all obsessed with being engaged and getting married? In my mind I searched back to when I was six. I remember playing house and having an imaginary husband named David Hill. (I have no idea where that name came from.) But, in those games, I think I had an imaginary name, too. I wasn't me. I was just some imaginary woman who had an imaginary husband.

And while my mind is trying to put all this in perspective, she's still talking on and on. I wish that I'd been able to record everything she was saying.I tried to think of all the little girls I know now, including my granddaughter, and I couldn't think of a one who talked like this. And then I began to wonder, who is this girl's mother?

Just then, the little girl's mother walked up to her and she was embarrassed almost to the point of tears. She couldn't even bring herself to make eye contact with me. She told her young daughter to stop talking to strangers and then it wasn't long after that they left the store. The engagement ring was still there.

The whole incident left me feeling a little breathless and I find myself wondering just how that little girl's life will turn out. I guess I'll never know.