Lost in the word 'found' after discovering a damaged ring

Wedding ring discovery gets the cogs turning

How was it that the ring found itself abandoned? Picture: STUDIO GRAND OUEST

INFORMER likes the word "found”. It carries excitement and anticipation.

Google "they found” and the results are thrilling - they found her; they found a cure; they found a harbour for their hearts; they found a cave; they found a cannonball on Mars; they found this in my ear.

I can get lost in found.

Informer found a wedding ring. I was out on a run, looking good, feeling fine. No, that's not true. I was actually trying not to barf up a lung and, as I bent over, hands on knees and struggling for breath, there it was.

It's a man's ring, so to speak without sniggering, a band of gold circumnavigated by two delicate lines of silver.

I don't know about this stuff, but Mrs Informer informs Informer that even with the damage, this was once an impressive piece of jewellery.

Alas, the damage is considerable. The ring is no longer round, most likely the result of being run over by a car.

That I found it near a driveway adds weight to the theory, although I haven't watched enough episodes of Midsomer Murders to ascertain the make or model of the vehicle in question.

You know that famous painting, The Scream? Well, the ring is now the shape of that dude's head, which is ironic from a nuptial point of view because his expression is the same as that on the faces of Mrs Informer's family when she announced she was marrying me.

But I digress. Despite knocking on a few nearby doors, no one Informer asked claimed the wedding ring as theirs. One bloke, speaking under his breath, even confessed he wouldn't mind rolling his under the Camry a few times.

Finding the wedding ring was a coincidence because it's only in the past month that I have resumed wearing mine.

Never blessed with slender fingers, decades as a fat bloke only exacerbated Informer's digital dilemma. My wedding ring was too tight and too painful, so for all those years all my fingers went unadorned.

No rings attached.

Now that I'm thinner, lots of things that didn't fit me suddenly do again, wedding ring included. Accordingly, I had it cleaned, polished and ever since have been wearing it with pride. Because I love Mrs Informer, she says.

That most irrefutable of sources, Wikipedia, says wedding rings date back about 6000 years to ancient Egypt, and the romantic in Informer likes to think their exchange has historic depth and meaning rather than any connection to some early pyramid scheme.

That's why finding one gives you pause, inviting speculation as to how it was lost, where it was found and the sorry state this particular one was found in.

There are two scenarios at play, the simplest being that the ring was accidentally lost and its absence is keenly felt. The second is more dramatic, representative of a commitment that began with love, but which has ended in the kind of raw emotion able to be expressed only by consigning the discarded ring to the rugged rubber of the radials.

I've advertised the ring and hope someone gets in touch, because then I could give them a ring back about giving them a ring back.

My suspicions are that my find will remain neither exciting nor anticipatory, but only that most uninspiring of things: a lost cause.

Originally published as Lost in the word 'found' after discovering a damaged ring