My Daughter’s Engagement Ring

As of last night, my eldest daughter is wearing an engagement ring. For the record, her father and I are delighted to see her wearing it.

Isn’t it pretty?

17 years old and a freshman in college, she’s no longer only having to deal with boys who are interested in her….she’s now dealing with men…and it’s frustrating her. The male friends she hangs out with and the sweet boys from church and our homeschool group are nothing compared to the aggressiveness of the men in her college classes.

She’s a gorgeous girl with a witty sense of humor who loves to talk to people. Unfortunately, that chatty friendliness is being mistaken as romantic interest, and she’s sick of it. After dealing with a particularly obnoxious string of calls and text messages all weekend from one of her classmates, she expressed her frustration that this 20-year-old man would not understand that she had no intention of dating him. Ever.

She told him that she didn’t want to get involved with him, told him she had a boyfriend, even warned him that her parents would never approve…but he kept texting her. Which is when she blocked his number from her phone and then came to me for help.

“What would you do,” she asked me, “to keep the boys away? I have no desire to date anyone at my college this semester, because I’m 17 and I’m going off to college in the fall. Is there like some kind of boy repellent out there?”

“Yes,” I told her. “It’s called an engagement ring.”

Her eyes lit up and she started to laugh. “You’re brilliant, Mom.”

And that’s why my husband and I stopped in at the mall on our date night last Saturday and purchased a couple of “diamond” rings for our teenager to wear. When we got home that night, my husband dropped down on one knee in front of her and they both laughed as he asked, “Will you promise to not date any creepy guys, to be more careful about who you give your number to, and to not get married until you are good and ready?”

“I will!” she told him, and then slipped her “creepy guy repellent” onto her finger.

So there you have it, the new college freshman “must have” for nice girls everywhere – a fake engagement ring so that the yucky guys will leave them alone.