Not a Dog's Tale/Lore of the Ring

I lost my wedding band yesterday.

Sometimes, the best way to increase the dramatic tension of a story is to bury the lede. Stanley went on for goddamn ever before finally admitting he’d found Dr. Livingston. He made you wait for it: “Dr. Livingston, I presume,” didn’t come until the reader had less hope than Stanley ever did.

Not tonight. I lost my wedding ring. The ring, the one she put on my finger when I took those vows in front of all those people. That ring. The one. I lost it. The week of my bride’s birthday. “Happy birthday, honey! To demonstrate my love for you, I’ve gone and tossed aside the one tangible bit you gave me on our wedding day! Where are you going?”

It must have happened during or right after my shower. I noticed it was gone when I was rubbing my hands together with the creamy stuff Eve makes me buy for my hair. (Eve is a genius. One expensive haircut from her every three weeks, and then all I have to do in between is put a small bit of some cheap stuff in my hair, brush it quickly, and forget about it. Call me a metrosexual if you must, but never have so few done so little to look so good. Anyway.) Rubbing my hands, there was a distinct lack of presence where something should have been distinctly present.

That realization was followed immediately by one of those Oh Shit moments you know will stick with you in the exact same way that oatmeal with wheat germ doesn’t.

OK OK OK OK OKOKOKOK. It can’t have gone far. It has to be around here. I would’ve noticed if it was missing when I was washing my hair, for the same reason I noticed it was missing when I was putting in the cream stuff.

Only it wasn’t. I tore apart the bedroom and bathroom for an hour before giving up. And when I say, “giving up,” I mean: “Giving up on those two rooms and then going and tearing up the rest of the house for even longer.” There was a flashlight involved. Much moving of furniture and emptying of drawers and accusing looks at the cat. And… why is the dog coughing?

Yeah, Xander coughed. And I had sudden images of me wearing latex gloves all the way up to, I don’t know, my toes, digging through his little gifts in the back yard.

Well, what would you have thought?

So I called the vet. The conversation went like this:

Me: This is going to sound strange, but I’ve lost my wedding ring, and there’s a chance the dog got it.

Pretty receptionist: Oh my. What kind of dog is it?

Me: He’s a Golden Retriever.

Pretty receptionist: You’d better bring him in.

(Golden owners will understand why that is funny.)

The next conversation I had went like this:

Me: Xander, wanna go for a ride?

Xander: (No actual speech in reply, but he instead became a fuzzy blond cruise missile aimed at the door to the garage.)

Half an hour and half a hundred dollars later, Xander was off the hook. I, however, was still half on it. On the plus side, I’d wriggled out of spending the afternoon waiting for the dog to poop, then digging through the results for buried treasure. On the minus, I still had no clue where my wedding band had gotten to.

I still don’t. I’ve looked everywhere.

And so now I have to ask you: Where is the strangest place you’ve ever found lost jewelry, and how long did it take for it to turn up?

Click on the “Drinks” below to leave me your answer. And please tell me it didn’t take long, because in the meantime, I’m the one in the doghouse.