HitchDied

Moment of Panic

| 15 Comments

Walking out of a diner with three members of the bridal hootenanny, I gasped and screamed, “OH MY GOD!”

Abby thought my car was stolen.

John thought I saw a dead body.

Liz, an arachnophobic, thought there was a spider.

In reality: my engagement ring wasn’t on my finger.  This provokes in me the kind of shocked horror that you’d expect in a victim of or witness to a major crime (to Liz, spiders are a crime).

I ran back into the diner, searching our booth desperately. Then I emptied my pockets with shaking hands, finally finding my ring tangled up in my keys inside my right coat pocket. I have no idea how it got there. I’m just glad it’s back on my finger.

Abby said, “That’s the right reaction to have. It means you really love Collin.” I think it means I really love my ring, but I also really love Collin, so I’m not gonna split that hair.

This ever happen to you? Did you keep your cool better than I did (I hope?)

15 Comments

  1. CLAMP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  2. I sometimes forget where I put it and don’t remember taking it off, but at least you realized right away. For me, it would be 3 days later and I’d be scouring the floorboards when really I left it at work or something.

    I did lose the watch he got me for graduation :( . I’m totally bummed about that one.

  3. So glad you found it! When my parents were on their honeymoon, skiing in Colorado, the diamond fell out of my mother’s ring into the snow, rendering it practically invisible. My father spent an hour searching for it, and finally found it jammed underneath the doormat. I think he was as relieved as she was!

  4. Hahahaha, I love your analysis that this just means you really love your ring, which is separate from how much you love your partner. Thumbs up.

    I left my ring behind in a bathroom at work once, in the first week of getting engaged. I was taking it off each time to wash my hands and forgot to put it back on. Now I keep it on when outside the apartment and have had it long enough to get that phantom ring feeling if it’s not on and I’m outside. I take it off pretty much as soon as I get home because it gets in the way when cooking/cleaning etc.

  5. Occasionally this little sucker will slide off my finger and drop to the floor and it gives me a moment of panic. I hadn’t really stopped to think about whether it was panic about losing the ring or losing something the Beagle gave me that had symbolic value. I think it’s probably a combination of both. I do love my ring as a separate thing from my relationship because it’s beautiful. But I also love looking at it and remembering the moment I received it. I guess it’s all wrapped up in itself. I would be heartbroken to loose it.

  6. haha! i dropped mine in the sink once and it was sitting next to the drain. Isaiah reached for it and I SCREAMED at him. “DON’T FUCKING TOUCH IT, YOU’LL KNOCK IT IN! HELP ME, DAMNIT!”

    Yeah, real nice. he gave it to me, afterall.

  7. My fingers swell at night, so I sometimes switch my ring to my right hand in my sleep. One morning I woke up, and my ring was missing. Scared the bejeezers out of me because my ring is fairly small (although I love, love, love it in part because it is small) and would be easy to lose. Turned out that in my sleep I had gotten up out of bed and set my ring on my dresser instead of switching hands.

    One of these days I am afraid that I will lose it in the sheets.

  8. ooh I have definitely misplaced it before. scary feeling! so glad you found yours in your pocket! I am perpetually scared I’ll lose my down the drain even though it isn’t even loose

  9. Yikes! I briefly lost my ring the day after getting engaged. The ring is an old family ring — more than 100 years old, in fact, and gorgeous — and it was a few sizes too big. But we went out to a New Year’s Eve party the day after we got engaged, and I was vain and wanted to wear the damn ring, and it fell of my hand while digging through a coat pocket. I had a few heart-stopping moments of utter panic — I’d lost the ring! The family heirloom ring! That his mother and grandmother and great-grandmother had worn before me! — while I tried to surreptitiously find it before C stopped talking to an acquaintance and noticed. He finally saw the look on my face (pale, sick, horror) did one sweep of the floor, and found it immediately.

    Needless to say, I stopped wearing the ring until I could have it resized, at which point I told the jeweler to make it so small I’d have to cut off my finger to get it off.

    (By the way, just found your blog via APW, and have chuckled my way through the magazine reviews — just what I needed this morning.)

  10. I can only imagine what you felt when you made that discovery…I would feel like my world is ruined.

  11. I had the big UH OH! moment walking back to the car from the beach on Memorial Day weekend. I realized I had taken it off when I was putting sunscreen on and put it next to me on the blanket, but when I got up and left forgot all about it and packed everything up. Luckily my friend found it in the sand (small miracle)! I can’t wait until I can start wearing my cheap band and not have to deal with this stress anymore.

  12. I realized mine was NOT on my finger one day sitting in the living room. Fiance and his friend are standing in the next room chatting away, and I begin this panicked, frantic (but silent) search of the living room. About 40 seconds later (felt like 40 years), I found it under the couch. I’d taken it off and put it on the cushion next to me and forgotten. I think it’s a good thing his friend was there, or I would have really freaked out. Having the 3rd party in the house was a blessing.

  13. The first time I realized I didn’t have my ring on I gasped and then started sobbing. My husband (then fiance) couldn’t figure out why it was such a big deal (we knew were it was) … and all I could do was sob.

    I can’ t even IMAGINE how I’d react if I noticed it was gone and didn’t know where it was.

  14. OMG I lost my ring while Lobster and I were putting away our Christmas tree. I freaked right out and started grabbing sections of disassembled Douglas Fir and started shaking them like a cheerleader’s pompoms. Luckily my ring clattered to the floor sometime during that attractive display, but I thought I was going to pass out.

    I’m glad yours was safe and sound in your pocket :)

  15. the diamond fell out of my ring about 2 weeks after we got engaged. the night before a final exam too. I freaked out. backtracked through an entire building at school and the parking garage, and my car and pretty much every other place I’d been since I last remember seeing my diamond. I called my fiance sobbing. he was cool as a cucumber, “it’s just a ring, we’ll figure out it, don’t worry”. Miraculously the jeweler replaced it free of charge. But lady I flipped out like no other.

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