LifeFiles: Ring Of Panic

I have never lost anything important.

Not my keys, not my wallet, not even a pencil.

I've often had this conversation with other men in which we all agree that there's something at the very heart of "maleness" that fears losing important things. Perhaps that's why Elwood Blues carried his harmonica in a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist.

Then, a few weeks ago, I happened to brush my thumb against the third finger from the right (palm down) on my left hand and noticed that something was missing.

My wedding ring was not there.

For about three seconds, every profanity I've ever used screamed through my skull at light speed, then I fell to the floor -- beginning a one-hour session of verbalizing all those naughty words -- to search for that small bit of Nevada-mined gold that has rested on my finger for the past four years.

Now, to understand my level of panic, you have to know that I rarely take off my ring -- usually only when I'm swimming. And in those cases I always place my ring in my wife's hand for safe keeping.

I wear my ring so much that it has deformed my finger slightly, as if I were one of the "giraffe women" of Baan Nam Peing village in Thailand, who wear brass rings around their necks. And just as those women fear their neck would snap if the rings were removed, I feared my ring finger would soon fall off.

It was at this point that I discovered something rather interesting about my new workplace (I've recently transferred from San Diego to Minneapolis):

As I crawled on my hands and knees underneath my desk, around my desk, around the cluster of cubicles where I sit, and to the break room, muttering profanities the whole way, not one single person asked me what I was doing. I can't decide if that's because they're really laid-back up here, or because they had heard I'm eccentric: "Hmm, I guess that's just how Chris acts."

While I was able to gain a real appreciation for the thoroughness with which the cleaning crews so skillfully apply their craft in our palatial headquarters, I was not able to find my ring.

My co-worker, Scott, correctly assessed that I was not going to be very productive until I found my ring, and insisted that I go home to continue my search.

Scott later told me that although he does not wear his wedding ring, he always knows exactly where it is -- safely at the bottom of Galveston Bay, in Texas. It fell off five years ago.

"I can still see it: a long, glinting arc, and me feeling like at any second I'd zap into super-speed and be able to pluck it out of the air," Scott said.

I had no memory of the last time I had seen my ring. I did have an excruciating 20-minute drive home with which to work myself into a state of subhysteria.

Just like my mother and her father, I have an uncanny knack of being able to look at almost anything and think up the worst possible outcome; my years of being a journalist -- having read and written hundreds of stories of tragedy -- don't help much. And, it's morbid, I know, but I think my biggest fear is that something awful would happen to either myself or my wife without my final words to her having been "I love you."

I had that morning, as always, told my wife I love her (in two languages, no less), but What If she found my ring seemingly haphazardly discarded and, in her confusion at what it meant, slipped on the stairs and knocked herself unconscious at the same time that the house suddenly caught on fire and then, the shoddy condition of the city's firetrucks (it is Minnesota, after all, the winters are hard on vehicles. And the bad economy has a lot of city services cutting back) would prevent them from starting, leaving only me to save my wife and explain to her what in the googly-moogly I had been doing not wearing my ring, but I couldn't do that because I was stuck in lunch-hour traffic!

In an effort to get home that much faster, I reverted to California-style driving, which prompted a fellow driver to use a great deal of obscene language to explain Minnesota's driving laws once we came to an intersection.

I frantically waved my naked left hand at him and shouted: "I've lost my wedding ring!"

He offered a great deal more obscene language, this time explaining what my likely status would be with my wife for having lost my ring. He then frantically looked from side-to-side and shouted, "It's clear! Go!" -- urging me to run the red light.

I did, and was pretty much certifiable when I finally arrived home and hysterically apologized to my wife for having lost track of the symbol of our marriage.

"It's just a ring," she said, and sat me down as she searched for and found my ring (total search time 0.25 seconds).

On Thursday, my wife and I celebrated our fourth anniversary. And I found myself tapping my ring all day long to assure myself that it was still there.

My wife is right that it's just a simple piece of metal -- if I pawned it, we might be able to buy dinner at Chili's. But what that little piece of metal represents, and the beautiful woman that it attaches me to is what makes it so incredibly important to me.

I wouldn't mind losing the ring, but would never want to lose all the good times I have had while wearing it. And even though I say it all the time, I can never say it enough: I love you, Rachel. Happy anniversary.

Chris Cope is married, with no children. His column appears every other Tuesday.