Old wives and lost rings

By Felix Carroll

You only need to hear so many old wives tales about lost wedding rings to start questioning who the hell these old wives were anyway. Surely they had a knitting circle, smoked hashish and had anger issues.

"Okay, how about this one," one of them cackled, knitting a calico sweater with no hole for the head, "step on a crack, have an asthma attack?"

"No, no, no," another said, knitting a scarf in the shape of a gallows knot. "Step on a crack, break your mother’s back."

The room must’ve erupted with a resounding "Yes! Write it down! Write it down!"

"Beatrice," the old wives' chairwoman says, "this is why you’ve been named Most Sadistic four years running."

And ever since then, whenever children accidentally step on a crack, they hoof it home, fearful their mothers have suddenly been put into traction.

I lost my wedding ring three weeks ago. Poof! Gone. I can only imagine the old wives taking delight on the day lost wedding rings were on their docket.

"Okay, okay, how about this: If you lose your wedding ring, your mother will have an asthma attack?"

"Come on, enough with the asthma attacks already."

"Okay, okay, how about if it falls down into the toilet, then both the man and the wife will be incontinent for seven months?"

"Hmm. Promising."

"No, no, no. If your wedding ring falls off, rolls out the door, down the street, into a graveyard and rests upon a headstone of a Confederate soldier, you’ll soon be signing divorce papers at Appomattox Courthouse?"

"Whoa. Sick."

"Crafty."

"Timeless."

"Wait, wait, wait. That’s all fine and well," says Beatrice, "but we also need a tale that’s universal. You know, share the scare."

So here we have it: Losing one’s wedding ring is a harbinger for marital disaster — maybe imminent death, maybe unfaithfulness, maybe one partner is hauled off by a giant bird.

We’ve checked everywhere for the ring.

I removed it because it was digging into my finger when I was splitting firewood. I swear I left it on the kitchen island, a three-feet wide by eight-feet long jungle where the detritus of domesticity washes ashore: homework assignments, car keys, a stud finder, a hole puncher, a building permit application for the woodstove, a nametag, a beet. Three times we've formed search parties to scour the island. Three times we found more Legos.

We’ve checked all pockets, all rooms, all cars, all day, all night. We’ve disemboweled the vacuum cleaner. We’ve considered having the dog X-rayed. We've petitioned the intercession of St. Anthony, patron saint of lost things, but he must be out on assignment searching for signs of intelligent life in the U.S. Congress.

The more we look, the worse it gets. The longer it goes, the more I wistfully think of that momentous day 11 years ago, under blue skies at Race Point in Provincetown, Mass. She placed the ring on my finger, a simple gold band that served as a sign of love without end. I'd never take it off. That was the deal. Unless it caused bleeding, which it did three weeks ago.

Three weeks gone by, and only the rut on my ring finger remains. My thumb, a mere three digits away, still reaches for it out of habit, a kindly neighbor making a well-being check, but it finds only bare flesh. It's gone, gone, gone — gone without leaving a note.

In the realm of inanimate objects, a wedding ring's disappearance seems a gargantuan calamity with no equivalent. What could be worse?  Let me think. Oh, here's one:

"Yeah, so I was heading home from work the other night, and I rounded the corner and pulled into my driveway, but my house wasn’t there. Poof! Gone. In its place was a dentist office. Weird, huh? I’m really bothered by it. What do you think that means?"

"Well, there’s an old wives tale that says if your house is mysteriously replaced by a dentist office, you’ll have seven years of bad teeth."

(Beatrice must have been out sick that day.)

I’ve played by the rules of those old wives. I don’t swallow my gum. I don’t open umbrellas indoors. I broke a mirror once, but I've been making restitution for it, combing my hair now by my reflection in the dog’s eyes. If a black cat crosses my trail, I throw salt over my left shoulder, stick six frozen cranberries in my shoe, turn my back to a magpie, lay a handkerchief over a bowl of oatmeal, and hope for the best.

Somewhere out there there's a wedding ring that belongs to me. And for obvious reasons I need to find it before my wife grows old.