The Ring in the Beer Bottle

I proposed to my wife with a $250 ring. In a beer bottle.

In 2009 I was broke. I'd given my car back to the bank because it was the only honest move I had left. I was living with my grandparents in Augusta, Kansas, and I was a few months from shipping out to Navy boot camp.

But I'd met a girl at the grocery store where we both worked. And I knew, even though it had only been two months.

I couldn't ask her to wait on a man who hadn't committed to anything. So I asked her grandmother's blessing first. Then I bought a ring for two hundred and fifty dollars from a jeweler I mucked stables and did other farm work for, at eight bucks an hour.

The plan was a proposal at a popular Chinese restaurant in town. She didn't feel like going out.

So one night at her grandmother's house, having a couple of beers after work, I dropped the ring in her bottle when she wasn't looking.

And then I died a little on every single drink she took.

It went into her mouth. She didn't swallow it, thank God.

She fished out that little ring, stared at me... and said yes.

She said yes to a man with no car, no career and a one-way ticket to boot camp. She saw something anyway.

Sixteen years, two states and a whole Navy stint's worth of goodbyes later, she's still the best yes I ever got. And she'll tell you she almost swallowed the second-best decision of her life.