Broken hearted

A young guy came in to sell his ex's engagement ring. He was only two years younger than me.
"Yeah, my girlfriend and I broke up, and now I guess I wanna sell her ring."
"Ok, let me examine it."
He seemed to know what was next, as was already in the system, so he handed it over. I examined the ring with my loop, took down my scratching board and got out the acid. The emotion was hanging in the air, making me feel like an executioner. I looked up just in time to see his visibly sigh, a sigh of regrets. I scratched the ring onto the board, feeling like I was hurting the poor guy. The acid went on, and I felt like his broken heart was getting burned. I guess his age made it hard to disguise his true feelings. We pulled the file out, and started to file into the bottom of the ring. It seemed to be the nail in the coffin, because after that, he was sort of blank faced.

"We can give you $45.00"
"Yeah fine"
"Oh wait..the scale is messed up, I think you're gonna get more. $200."
"Yeah ok"
"Oh nevermind, sorry, its fine again, it's $45.00"
"Yeah, thats fine."

We gave him his money and he left.

The longer I'm here the more I realize how silly it is to live here. I feel silly for moving to an overpopulated city, aspiring towards little pieces of green paper and fame and glory. I could never feel silly about living in a forest so much greater than myself. I could feel in awe constantly until I died there. I can only be thankful that I will never have a "what if" about moving here. So with the navy and this move, I have two what if's crossed off the list. That's a relief.
-feeling silly about living in NYC but not oregon