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Retiring the practice ring

rings

Have you ever seen a cat, unaccustomed to a collar, utterly flip out in a harness? (Poor old Pinky comes to mind). Well, I’m kind of funny about my hands, and I haven’t worn rings in a very long time and a couple of years ago — when it began to look as though Uncle B and I were really going to tie the knot, after all — I began to worry about the wedding band. What if I went all lose-my-shit Pinky wearing some thing on my finger allthedamn time?

Then I remembered the ring from my mother’s safety deposit box. It was a small platinum or white gold wedding band, just my size. Mother wrote on the envelope that it had been found in the hospital where she worked and turned in, but no one ever came to claim it.

Must be a sad story to go with, but as I didn’t know the details, there didn’t seem any harm in wearing the thing on my right hand for a while. A sort of training ring, as it were.

I did okay, too. I got a little fiddly with it, maybe, but it didn’t drive me screaming bughouse crackers.

After some months, though, the metal went oddly dull. Still, it would polish up okay, so I assumed I had just becrapped it. Then it developed a curiously rough edge along one side. Finally, I took it off and gave it a good, hard look.

It wasn’t precious metal at all. It was stainless steel over brass.

For two years, I have been wearing the missing O-ring from some poor bastard’s heart-lung machine.

February 26, 2009 — 7:50 pm
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