How to pry a ring off a world leader
By Beth Teitell
Thursday, June 30, 2005

Dear Answer Lady:

I hope you can help me with my problem. In my position as a major world leader (I'd prefer not to name the country) I was given a ring as a gift.

Frankly, it's too gaudy for my taste. You should see this thing. It looks like something 50 Cent would wear. Or maybe a Boca grandma. I kid you not when I say it weighs more than a quarter of a pound.

So anyway, I'm at this meeting of business executives, which, truth be told I didn't even feel like going to, but it's always good to make connections, and the food's usually decent so I said OK.

I'm standing around during the coffee break when a man comes up all proud and hands me the ring. Not wanting to be rude, I tried it on. But there were photographers all over the place and there was no way I was going to let anyone snap a picture of me wearing that thing. I gave him a tight smile, whipped it off and put it in my pocket.

Fast forward: I get home from the meeting and even though I had laundry to do and bills to pay, I started reading some newspapers that had piled up. (You know how it's sometimes kind of funny when you read back stuff because you already know what happens - like when all the papers were wondering if the Tom Cruise-Katie Holmes affair was a mere publicity stunt and I already knew they were engaged.)

Well, it was all fun and games until I get to a story about how some major world leader wrongly took a ring that he was just being shown. People are calling me a thief. Believe me, if I wanted to steal something, it would not be that ring.

But here's my question: How do I get it back to the guy without losing face?

Yours, Major World Leader

Dear MWL,

Funny, I just read in the paper about a similar situation that happened to Russian President Vladimir Putin. He would never write for advice, although if he did, I might suggest he use his KGB training to sneak the ring back into the owner's house one day, thereby preventing an international incident without losing face.

But of course you're the one writing for advice, not Putin. If I were you, I'd regift it. Heck, you're a world leader, no one's going to call you on it.