When the ring goes missing

It's happened to a few people I know. We even wrote a story about it last week in The Register Citizen. I just never thought it would happen to me.

Last year, a coworker called me on her day off and asked "Is my engagement ring on my keyboard at my desk?" I went to look, then reported back. "Yes, right where you left it." She came to pick it up a few minutes later.

Two years before that, a married reporter went to cover something at a camp facility. When he came back, he was without his wedding band. After several phone calls to people at the camp, and several young girls searching buildings and areas where he had been, he had to give up hope to ever find his ring again. "My wife is going to kill me," was the last thing he said before he went home that night.

Tonight, I was driving home fiddling with my fingers on the steering wheel when all of a sudden something didn't feel right. "My ring!" I exclaimed. "I'm not wearing my ring!"

Earlier in the day I had taken the ring off while I was putting lotion on my very dry arms. Perhaps it was still sitting on my desk at work? I immediately called work. No ring. A was put on hold while a coworker - the same one from above who lost her ring last year - looked around my desk, my garbage can, the floor, piles of papers on other desks... NOTHING!

"I'll call you later if it shows up," she said, not sounding certain it would. I wasn't certain either. Where could it be?

For ten minutes, I was in a panic, thinking I'd lost my grandmother's golden ring. I'm not sure if it's worth much, but to me it's worth the world. Especially since it is now a symbol of mine and Albie's relationship.

When I finally got home, I emptied all my pockets. Nothing. Then my last hope... my gloves! I was barely inside the door when I threw the thin gloves down on the stairs and started slapping the outside of them. And there, inside one of them, was a great big lump! Phew!

The ring must have slipped off after I spent ten minutes cleaning off my car in the freezing cold (it was nice and sunny when I went to work this afternoon, then the temps dropped 20 degrees in a few hours and we had 2 inches of snow). My gloves were wet from all the snow, so I had ripped them off and thrown them onto the passenger seat before I went home.

It's a good thing they were wet, though. Had I stuffed them back into my pockets, I may have never found the ring, or may have lent the gloves to someone else with the ring still inside!