Lost Rings

I realized this morning that everyone has a Lost Ring story.
Ie: Me
     Gollum
     My friend Jay
     My current English teacher
     Jay's grandfather
    A story written by my ex-English teacher Mr. Orr

I find this to be interessant. Rings seem to hold such a deeply personal meaning to the wearer that losing them is a horrible atrocity, one that is remembered forever. My Lost Ring story is about my mother's engagement ring:

The setting- I'm in the third grade. My mother is about to marry, after 3 very long years of making him wait, the man who will become my stepfather. I'm dressed in a green silk dress as the maiden of honor; it's December 16th and the chapel is decorated with holiday-themed gold and silver. My soon-to-be stepfather is already tearing up. He cries at the drop of a hat. I say a little blessing to my parents and step behind my mother. Before the vows between her and my stepfather begin, she takes off her modest engagement ring. She hands it to him. He steps forward and says to the congregation that he knows he's not just marrying my mother but also me, in that he will be from this point onward tied to my life as well. He turns to me and hands me the engagement ring. The vows are said and my mother is given a beautiful new ring with three sparkiling diamonds. Everyone tells her how beautiful it is, and so do I, but I keep catching glances of the round diamond in my new ring, at the shining platinum of its band.
Fast-forward five years- It's my freshman year of high school. I'm being forced to take P.E., which I hate. Our teacher has told us that we must remove all jewelry before we endure our torture. I take my ring off as I do every day for the class and set it on my school clothes, folded up on a bench. When I return to the locker room, I don't notice my ring is missing.
Later, I realize my ring is gone, and I scour the locker room for it. My ring is not there. I put in a request to the school's lost and found, but to no avail. Eventually, I come to grips with the truth- my ring has been lost forever. I cry; big, heaving sobs for a silly object, a shiny material possesion. And yet it was so much more than that to me; I'm in tears because the ring's happy and rich new owner will either sell it for cash or wear it, never knowing how much it meant to someone else.
I've come to grips with the loss of my ring, but I continually miss it in its absence. Four years later, I still run my thumb around the base of my ring finger expecting it to be there and being just a little surprised when it isn't.

This morning, in English class, my friend Jay thought he had lost his Eagle Scout ring. His concern upset our teacher, who, it turns out, once lost a special tiger's-eye ring of his own. Jay mentions his grandfather, who lost his Annapolis class ring. My classmates start throwing out their own stories of lost rings. It seems there is no jewelry or bauble that could be more important to a person than their ring, and hardly anything is easier lost. Makes one think of the fleeting nature of life; how quickly we can lose what means the most to us...