My Hostage

When I left my husband he had taken what he thought was a precautionary measure to stop me. He took all my diamond rings and held them hostage. If he had been in his right mind he would have known that I would never have stayed with him for anything so trivial but I did want my rings. So, right before I walked out the door, I took a diamond ring that his dad had given him before he died to be my hostage.

I had no intention of keeping the ring. I knew it would be just the leverage I needed to get my ring back. I took off up interstate 95 from West Palm Beach headed for West Virginia and family. Along the way I learned he had cancelled all the credit cards except for a gas card which was enough to get me home and feed me along the way.

I stopped at a rest area in Melbourne, Florida and used the opportunity to clean out my car. I left. About 2 hours up the road (Daytona, Florida) I realized that one of the bags that I had thrown away contained Bobby's diamond ring. My heart dropped and I immediately did a U-turn and headed back to the rest area 2 hours away.

I was going south. The rest area was on the north side of the freeway. Just when I got next to the rest area (facing the wrong way on the interstate) I saw a garbage truck pull up to the exact trash can that I had thrown the ring away in. I had to dart across the median (thank God, it was a nice flat spot and I could do it!) and speed into the rest area with my horn blowing. Of course the garbage man that was carrying the trash can to the truck was paying absolutely no attention to my blowing horn and I pulled up and jumped out of my car yelling for him to stop!

The look on his face said, "what in the world is this crazy lady doing?!?" I got him to put down the trash can and frantically started to search through the trash. Not too far down I found the bag and when I pulled out a diamond ring the guy said, "geez, I'm going to have to start routing through the trash myself."

Anyway. Ring Saved. I got my rings back as soon as Bobby learned that I had his dad's ring and I safely mailed his ring back to him. I didn't even want to imagine what would have happened if I hadn't retrieved that ring. He would never have believed that I had thrown it away accidentally.