Since it is about a week until St. Patrick's Day, I thought this opus is applicable to the subject at hand.

 

I have always liked rings. When I was a kid, I had a few that I wore from time to time. The reason I didn't wear them too often or too long was that most of them came from Cracker Jack boxes and they turned my fingers green, which is a sign of a cheap ring. I usually lost all of my rings anyway except for bathtub rings. Even some of the rings I wore later in life turned my finger green. It took me quite a while to realize I needed to buy more expensive rings. These expensive rings never turned my finger green, but when I saw how much they cost, I turned green.  When I was in college, I had some extra money and had a choice whether to buy a relatively expensive lion head ring, or a fairing (windscreen) for my motorcycle. Since they both cost about the same, I chose to buy the ring. Why, I don't know. Maybe I got tired of walking around with a green ring finger.  Unfortunately, I eventually lost the ring. The fairing would have been much more practical because all I had for transportation at that time was my dependable Suzuki motorcycle. Alas, live and learn.

 

If you notice old movies or 1960s TV series, you may have noticed that many men wore "pinkie" rings. I'm not sure how that fad came about. When I was in high school, the only "pinkie" rings I saw were guys that were going steady with some girl. They wore the girl's class ring on their "pinkie", or if the ring was too small, they wore it on a chain around their necks. I never did this mainly because I never purchased a class ring and never went steady with any girl in high school since I was very shy around girls and still am. Maybe it was a recessive trait from my pre adolescent days. After all, one has to be careful of contracting "Cooties" you know. The girls always wore the guy's class ring on their finger. To make it fit, they wound yarn around it. The only problem with that was if the girl's favorite color was pink, it might have caused the other guys to wonder about the guy.

 

Before I lost my rings, I used to wear four of them, two on each hand. One time in 1968, I was jumping off the back of a semi and one of the rings caught the hinge of the trailer and almost tore my finger off. Since that time, I haven't worn any rings, except a wedding ring.

 

A few years later, I was reminded again of how dangerous rings can be. When I was at horse shoeing school in Oklahoma several years ago, one guy was shoeing a horse. Just as he was ready to clinch one of the horseshoe nails, the horse kicked its leg up and caught the nail in his ring. The result was that the guy nearly lost his finger and needed several stitches. I also have a scar from shoeing a fractious horse on the inside of my left hand little finger where an unclinched nail caught it when the horse suddenly kicked up. That little incident resulted in six stitches. However, I did finish the shoeing and then went to get the stitches. Horseshoers have to be tough you know. I have theorized if I had been wearing a ring, my finger may have been torn off. That school was a study in creative injuries. Alright, enough of this gory stuff. Now on to the subject of some other precarious events of my previous ring wearing.

 

When I was a junior in high school, my grandmother "Ollie" went on a trip to Ireland. She was Irish and her maiden name was Fennel. Sounds more like a spice to me, but I guess it was indeed Irish. I have a lot of Irish corpuscles in me. That's where a most people think I got my sense of humor. Therefore, now that you know, you can blame the Irish. Actually, I'm approximately 30% Irish 30% English and 30% Austrian and 10% unknown origin. However, I'm 100% eccentric. I always have been and have always been proud of it. I think I got that from my grandmother "Ollie" too. Some examples of her eccentricity are described in earlier stories. While she was in Ireland, she bought me an Irish Claddach ring, which is a kind of friendship ring. This is a traditional Irish ring composed of two hands around a heart topped by a crown. It was a very expensive sterling silver ring. I wore it on the middle finger of my left hand because it was too large to wear on my ring finger. When people admired it and wanted to see it, since it was on my middle finger, I was always very careful to hold up all my fingers! J I really liked the ring and wore it for several months. This was one of the only rings I ever wore that I didn't loose. On the last day of school in my junior year, our shop class was out playing baseball since we had already closed the shop classroom and stored everything for the summer. I was playing third base. There were guys on first and second bases. The batter hit a line drive right to the second baseman; Gary H. Gary fired it to me at third base for the force out. Since none of us were wearing baseball gloves, I went to catch it and it hit right along the top of my left middle finger nail and ricocheted way past me. Yeah, the one that had my expensive Irish ring on. It tore my cuticle back about ½ inch. My finger immediately started to swell up and the ring was getting tighter and tighter. Since our Shop teacher, Mr. Gaich was concerned that it would cut off the circulation to my finger, we went back to the shop and dug out a hacksaw and cut the ring off my finger. That really disappointed me to lose my beloved Irish ring. To this day, my cuticle never has returned to its proper position and is still pushed back a little bit. In retrospect, I wonder why I never thought to take it to a jeweler to have it repaired. Well, one reason was that shortly after this incident I lost that ring too!

 

Well, now you have it, a thumbnail or rather a "fingernail" sketch of my ring history just in case you all were wondering. (You were, weren't you???) By the way, if any of you readers are planning to get me an expensive Christmas or birthday present, please get me another gold lion head ring. I don't need a motorcycle fairing now.