I originally wrote this 25 years ago and am reposting on request.
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Today's story is about Eric, his wife, Tracy, and their beagle named Kirby. Under normal circumstances a happy little family. However, when it is 2 A.M. and the beagle wants to imitate Snoopy howling at the moon like when Linus is out in the pumpkin patch waiting for the Great Pumpkin, Eric, Tracy, and the neighbors are a little less happy.
Our story begins with Tracy and Kirby in the back yard playing around. The dog is very interested in the sparkling rock hanging on a thin gold chain around Tracy's neck. This was a diamond Eric had given Tracy as a present just before they were married. It represented Eric's last few dollars, and thus his true love for her, when he was still in his self-described "Ga-ga" stage of the relationship.
Like a true male he wasn't thinking about what he was doing. If he had, he would have said to himself, "Self, once you are married, you will never have any money again, it all goes to your wife's wishes, be it a new couch, bedroom set, house, or *choke* baby shoes, you will be in debt the rest of your life. You should spend this money on something of immense practical value that you will never be able to afford again, like a radio controlled model of the Titanic that you can crash into a floating block of ice, watch it sink, then you raise it and do it again. Remember the ad in Playboy (also something you will never see again) last week?". But no, our hero spent it on his fiancée.
So back in the backyard, Kirby makes a flying leap at Tracy and catches the chain in his paw, breaking it. Tracy is quite upset that this gift from the man she loves is broken. She takes it inside and puts it on the desk for Eric to see. This way she can point it out to Eric, and show how upset breaking his token of affection makes her. Eric is supposed to heroically get the chain fixed and then present it to her, once again winning her heart and undying love.
Fortunately for our story, it didn't happen this way.
For those of you who don't know Eric, he can be quite a focused individual. I've seen him sitting in front of his computer with his head down, brows furrowed, looking like he's going to butt heads with the screen, while people threw stuff at him, or placed ornaments in his traditional Austrian hat he wears during implementations, just to see if they can distract him. They always fail. The only time I've been able to get his attention was when I hit him in the side of the head with a snowball. (It was an accident...really).
Well somehow the importance of this item escaped Eric (he's been married a couple of years now, and has begun to settle in for the long haul). Nobody is sure how it happened, but all fingers point to Eric absentmindedly knocking it off of the desk onto the floor. I think he was looking at an interesting computer program and spread it out on the desk, after all, desk space to a programmer is far more valuable than a piece of crushed carbon.
At this point the diamond disappears. They know it was on the desk, and now it's not. A genuine horror engulfs them as they realize that their own living vacuum cleaner, Kirby, must have swallowed it whole. At this point they are faced with a number of options:
A) Call the insurance company, and let them deal with it.
B) Cut the dog open and retrieve said diamond, or
C) You guessed it, wait and see what turns up.
Eric was partial to A, I suggested B (they hadn't even thought of this one), but this being Tracy's diamond and favorite dog, she opted for C.
Eric comes home the next day to find Tracy absolutely ecstatic. She's found her diamond. Whereupon she presents to him a baggie of doggie doo that she had retrieved from the back yard. She had gone out back and searched through all of Kirby's, ummm, leftovers, and found her precious necklace. Eric can just make out the glitter of gold in the bag through the tears of laughter.
Now, mind you, it is still not too late for Eric to call the insurance company, he can make a claim, get a new diamond, and then later tell the insurance company he found the necklace and give them the baggie to deal with. Tracy will have none of that for her token of love. She soaks the necklace in soapy water, and then in jewelry cleaner. It now looks like new (but presumably is still broken), and no one will ever be the wiser.
But you all know dear readers. So the next time you are at a party, and see a young lady walking toward you with a diamond on a thin gold chain, be kind and don't act like Dracula when he first meets the heroine and cringes at the sight of the cross around her neck. All that glitters is not just gold.
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Postscript: I told this story to my cousin Beth who said she used to work in a dentist office and sometimes people’s gold crowns would come lose in their sleep and they would swallow them. The dentist would say, “You know, if you retrieve the crown, we can clean it up, put it back, and you won’t have to pay for a new one”.
Which begs the question, what would you do?
