Ring-a-ding-ding

Some of you may recall a post from a while back where you could see the silver ring I wear on my right hand. Here it is in close up:

My mother gave me that ring and it is probably my favorite piece of jewelry. I used to be really into wearing earrings, and I had a huge collection of unusual pieces, mostly sterling silver. I had ones that were shaped like big spiderwebs, with a little spider hanging from a separate chain. I had cloisonne snakes. I had Calder mobiles. Others were mostly non-representative of the animal kingdom or works of modern art, though they were were still pretty funky, but after the kids came along, I couldn't wear them, or necklaces, because little monsters kept trying to rip my earlobes apart to get them and possibly eat them. Now the kids are big enough to not want to ingest my jewelry (or anything else, damn picky eaters) but I haven't been able to get back into wearing anything, mainly because I cannot stand to look at myself in the mirror anymore and I certainly don't want any attention drawn to my facial and neckological areas.

Still, I have this innate need to adorn myself, and since tattoos are expensive and I refuse to pierce any part of my body other than my earlobes, I have been collecting rings.

Some of these are from college, most I got in the last few years. I like big and silver and I like gemstones like garnets and amethysts. But that silver scroll thing has been my favorite and I wear it most of the time now, even though it will, I am convinced, eventually kill me.

I say this because it has already tried to on a number of occasions. If you notice, the bottom of the ring is basically a hook, which can get caught on just about anything. Usually, I get hung up in plastic shopping bags, sometimes in my own clothing, particularly sweaters. And the only way to untangle it is to wrench off the ring so I can see what I'm doing. Once, I had an, um, personal adjustment to make, and it somehow got caught up on my underwear. That was a lovely sight - me with both hands down my pants, one attached to my froot-a-da-looms and the other trying to reach it to get the ring off. And yes I was at home - alone.

When I drove back to Kentucky from visiting my brother in Nashville, I had an eight-pack (minus two cans) of Dr. Pepper on the passenger seat next to me, along with my purse and other necessities for a road trip.  At some point, driving 70 mph along a stretch of country highway, I reached over to the seat to grab something, my phone maybe, and I got caught on the plastic rings that held the cans. Not only could I not extricate myself with the other hand on the wheel, but I also had approximately four pounds of soda cans attached to my finger. It's not like you can just put your hand in your lap and wait for a good place to pull over. And forget about scratching your nose. Thank god I wasn't driving the stick shift. I had to drive several miles leaning towards the passenger seat, my hand trapped by my own soda vice, until I could pull into a parking lot and free myself.

So last night, I'm taking a shower, and even though I should remove my rings when I do, I do not. Because I am lazy and also because I am afraid I will misplace them. And as I am going about my usual ablutions, the hook on that goddamn ring somehow got caught on my other ring, my wedding ring. So not only is my hand trapped AGAIN but now it has immobilized the other hand, the hand which I would normally use to get the trapped ring off but I can't BECAUSE IT'S ATTACHED TO THE RING.

I figure maybe I can get my hands soapy enough to work one or both rings free, but all of my soap bottles are the squeezy kind, and I could maybe get one hand around it to pick it up, but I need the other hand to squeeze the soap into and oh, fuck me. So I remember that there's hand-pump soap on the sink, but now I have to get my clumsy ass out of the shower without pulling down the curtain or falling on my face, and then I have to hold my hands under the soap dispenser WHILE PRESSING IT DOWN WITH MY CHIN to get the soap out.

Eventually the ring came free, none the worse for wear. That damn ring has never bent or been damaged by any of the things it has reached out and grabbed, and so I am fairly sure it is a demon ring, forged in the fires of hell, ever seeking to destroy its wearer, first through inconvenience and humiliation and eventually through somehow getting itself attached to a large piece of construction machinery or a pissed off bear. If I were smart, if I had any sense of self-preservation, I would take the damn ring and hurl it into a volcano or pass it off onto someone I dislike. Because it will be the end of me, I am sure of it.

But it's just so pretty.