Retiring the practice ring
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.
Posted: February 26th, 2009 under personal.
Comments: 19
Comments
Comment from Scott Jacobs
Time: February 26, 2009, 8:22 pm
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
Gods, that’s priceless. Who knew that Uncle B could get off so cheap. All he had to do was stop by a hardware store… 🙂
Comment from Mrs. Hill
Time: February 26, 2009, 8:54 pm
I’d never seen Pinky before just now — I’m feeling a little woo
Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: February 26, 2009, 9:08 pm
Well, you may have heard that Woolworths finally closed down here recently, Scott..
Whistle, whistle…
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: February 26, 2009, 9:33 pm
I’ve always felt really bad for Pinky. I bet he’s an extremely nice cat, and I would totally adopt him, and I surely hope someone did. That stupid dipstick was petting him all wrong and making him wear a harness and a camera crew was staring and everything.
Still, Pinky got claw-deep into man-thigh, so his life wasn’t for naught.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: February 26, 2009, 9:36 pm
Oh, and…the first minion who says “man hands” is going to get one upside the haid.
Comment from porknbean
Time: February 27, 2009, 1:21 am
Actually I was wondering if one of those hands were Uncle B’s. (At our wedding, the photographer had us pose our hands like that.)
Then I decided no, as there was no finger fur.
Comment from Mrs. Hill
Time: February 27, 2009, 2:09 am
Man hands? Pooh! No one looking at those would “think that her old gloves were on.”
Agreed on Pinky — hope he didn’t escape altogether, poor, frightened thing :(. The ‘grand finale’ did make me cringe, though. (You can see the end coming from the moment he sets his feet apart — why-y-y? Gaaagh!)
Comment from Lissa
Time: February 27, 2009, 1:47 pm
My father sent me that video, which led to this email exchange:
ME: “Er . . . um, cute kitty.”
DAD: “Dumb as a sack of bricks shit-for-brains officer.”
ME: “Yeah, that too.”
Comment from jdub
Time: February 27, 2009, 2:27 pm
posts like this are why I missed you, weasel.
Oh, and I’ve secretly been collected hints and clues about the location of your new digs.
I’ll be by Sunday morning, at your home in lovely XXXXXXXXXX
Comment from Jill
Time: February 27, 2009, 3:27 pm
Why would you wear a practice ring on your right hand?
Or do they wear wedding rings on the wrong side of the road over there as well?
🙂
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: February 27, 2009, 4:19 pm
I know, jdub, I know. And being the paranoid kind, I worry. There are a couple of local landmarks that would make me eminently Googlable, if they snuck into a photo.
No, they do this one the right way round, Jill. I wouldn’t have felt comfortable wearing a wedding band à la wedding band. I figured a ring on a finger was enough of a proof-of-concept.
Comment from Jill
Time: February 27, 2009, 10:43 pm
I’m wit’cha.
Even though I’ve been divorced for 20 years, and the GWC gave me a ring that I cannot wear because it drives me positively ape-shit, I still get those ‘I forgot to put on my ring’ pangs every stinkin’ day.
You know what I mean…those pangs you get when you realize that you left the house without your ring, or your watch…or your pants.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: February 28, 2009, 6:31 am
I got halfway to work one morning before it dawned on me, “I…I’m not wearing a bra!”
Comment from Jill
Time: February 28, 2009, 12:04 pm
Did you turn around, or just keep your arms crossed all day? In your line of work, that would have been non-productive.
Comment from Scott Jacobs
Time: February 28, 2009, 10:28 pm
God, I know that I hate it when I do that very thing, Weasel…
…
What? Don’t you judge me…
Comment from Joanna
Time: March 1, 2009, 12:52 am
I’m sending this anecdote to my student nurse sister. She’ll laugh her head off.
She also likes to wear fake diamond solitaires on account of she’s a hot coed who hates being hit on. She refers to them as “creep rings” because they keep away the creepers until she finds a keeper.
Comment from Dawn
Time: March 3, 2009, 11:25 am
Oh I do love this picture! Que romantico!
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