Trouble in Paradise!

One random-sample pat down, turbulent flight and missing tolietry bag later, I've arrived in Hawaii.

As we did not have any wedding-related work planned until the start of business hours Monday, we did like any respectable tourist, and headed to the beach. Ala Moana beach park, to be exact, as it was close enough to my parent's hotel and a tad bit cleaner than Waikiki's pools of sunscreen.

After a bit of snorkeling, Sak and I sat on the beach mats to get some sun. For fun, I muddled around taking ring shots on my toe.

As you can probably guess, my ring was quite sandy after this, and I didn't want to put it on. I gave it to Sak to hold while it dried enough to flake the sand off. He put it in his lap. Then, while my brother and I took pictures of my parents in the water, Sak stood up.

It took me about three minutes after that to remember that my ring was not in it's normal spot on my finger. I threw a look to Sak, waving my empty left hand around expectantly. His face fell, and my heart with it.

"I don't have it," he said.

Panic knocked at the door, but I refused to let it in just yet. How far could it have gone? It had to be around here somewhere. We started searching the towels and beach mats, pockets and beach bags, even the snorkel gear cases in case it had fallen inside. My brother wondered what we were up to, and his eyes grew wide at the news. He eyed the area I most feared. The sand.

Could it have fallen off the security of the mats, into the unforgiving, shifting sands? I will not lie, I was very upset at this point, but Sak had just about lost it. Infinite apologies were uttered every couple of seconds. All three of us sifted through the sand over where Sak had been sitting, feeling between the sticks and stones for one small piece of metal.

My parents, who were in the ocean with my sister, looked back to see our frantic efforts. To an outsider, it probably looked like we were simply playing around in the sand. My dad came over, interested, only to flip out at the news. Immediately he began crafting plans of finding a metal detector (not exactly useless anymore...), but my mother came up from behind and calmly stated that it couldn't have gone that far.

Five minutes turned into ten, which turned to fifteen, each minute more nauseating than the last.

I ran my hand over an area about a foot from where Sak had sat. One pass, two passes, three passes...something shiny caught my eye! It was my ring! It was about an inch and a half down in the sand, and practically a miracle that we found it. My dad huffed and puffed for a bit, and instructed me never to take it off again. Sak, still feeling that it was all his fault, went to go pull the car around for us. It was safe to assume we were all effectively "beached-out" at this point (except for my little sister, who had no idea what had happened, and did not want to leave for the life of her).

So the moral of the story? Be careful with beach ring shots. Be very, very careful.

(Apparently not such a rare type of accident?)

Have you had any "near-misses" since your engagement started?