A Ringing Event

Lo — these many years ago, when we first started our family we had a small house which we quickly outgrew as our fourth offspring came into this world. It’s still not clear to me how this happened because I was rarely home, but it did and it was kind of a great thing.  I love kids, especially when they belong to somebody else. Clearly we needed to get a bigger house or sell two of the four children, which at that time was against some federal law or another.

Most of this effort was relegated to the weekends because I was working about 50 hours a week, and going to grad school. Facts are this fourth edition was born during my finals in the last class required for me to graduate. I went from an “A” in this computer science class to a “D,” but the good Jesuits had mercy on me and kicked me out if I submitted a pledge not to return nor put the institution on my resume. As you might surmise I had little time to spare househunting. My spouse did most of the preliminary grunt work and we drug the family around on weekends looking for reasonably economic solutions. We finally located a suitable potential new home on a rather large chunk of ground that was absolutely inundated with wild flora and fauna. It was really poor planning on my part in that the backyard, so to speak, was approximately a half-acre of dead apricot trees and 50,000 gophers.

Of my few demonstratable accomplishments and encompassing accouterments was my college class ring. At the time I was employed in an area which was dominated by individuals with BS degrees or greater, and all had a prominent display of this achievement by wearing their class ring, mostly on the pinky finger. My degree was, at the time, a BS in Technology and in many instances I began to suspect these other guys’ degrees as being just plain BS.

I digress! It was midsummer and my loving bride informed me that the maid was not capable of keeping up the amount of soil and corruption being drug by in both the kids and our dog. The housekeeper had the same comment and I was instructed to do something about it. I may have neglected to mention that the housekeeper, the maid and my spouse were one and the same. Women are capable of true multiplexing and men are unfortunately categorized singularly as right brain idiots, which is likely the truth of the matter.

I digress! So while undertaking the task of converting this vast wasteland into something less than a dust bowl, I began the process of removing trees, moving around the ground and general stuff. I had no clue of what I was doing. I hate to wear gloves, as I have rather large hands and can never find a suitable fit. As part of this laborious endeavor I would remove my much cherished and important, egotistically, class ring.

During one of these weekends, having removed the all-important symbol of my intellectual capability, I placed it on a windowsill in the kitchen, or so I thought. At the end of this workday, having cleaned up a little bit, I came in for my customary backflip into a vodka martini, shaken not stirred! I went into the kitchen to retrieve this priceless piece of cheap jewelry only discover it was gone.    I looked around, but being infallible I knew exactly where I had left it. I asked the maid, I asked the housekeeper, and I asked my spouse, and all gave me the same answer, “it was not my turn to watch your damn ring.” I sensed a degree of real hostility and began an inquisition of the children, including our dog Rusty, who was knowingly smiling and wagging its tail! Little did he know that sooner or later, he would be traded in for a couple of bags of gold fish. But I digress!

I finally got around to our youngest who had cost me that “A” and who at that point was about 2 1/2 years old. But she had already figured out that the old man was a dolt. I asked her if she’d been playing with my ring and she admitted, being of the Washingtonian School of Honesty, “yes” by nodding her golden locks! I said very sweetly, “Aha.” “Gee, gosh, golly! Just where were you playing with this?” She looked at me with with her mother’s blue eyes and totally honest demeanor, and pointed to the backyard.

“Aha,” I thought, a clue! So we went hand-in-hand into the dust bowl with 50,000 gopher holes and she pointed to one and I asked her “did you put it in there, sweetie?” With her blue eyes sparkling and her sweet honest expression, she nodded her head “yes.” I went and grabbed a shovel and began digging away, now having completely forgotten my much deserved martini. After a couple of shovels full and sorting through the dirt, I looked and asked “is this the right hole?” She looked at me and gave me the negative response that I was hoping to not see, pointing to yet another hole. Need I go on? Clearly she was punishing me for some indiscretion that I was totally unaware of.

Keep in mind this was a Saturday and by Sunday I had given up all hopes of recovery. It was a case of every time I asked her where the ring was, she would point to yet a different hole and in utter frustration I discarded the balance of operation “ring recovery.” My spouse, after conferring with the maid and the housekeeper, informed me that I was overreacting and the three would save their pennies and buy me a new one. After that I did a backflip into two martinis and decided to forget the whole damn thing. The lesson I learned was I didn’t need a ring to be successful with my peer group, even though the ring represented a lot of effort involved in achieving a BS or what is laughingly referred to as “Toro droppings!”

It’s pretty humiliating learning a life’s lesson from a two and a half-year-old kid, but I guess it happens.

About two weeks later, there was a knock at the door and some friends of my darling young one were standing there with their mother! I looked at them and said “Hi, how are you?” They looked at me and said “Did you lose a ring?” Behold! The fairy godmother of BS had come to my rescue. There in the wee hand of one of my daughter’s playmates, is my “gopher-holed,” now meaningless class ring. I was so overjoyed, I ran to my wallet and presented the finder with a suitable fee. Curiosity got to me! I looked at her and asked “Where did you find this?” She looked at me and pointed across the street to a horse trail that I hadn’t bothered to dig up. I thanked them and closed the door. My youngest blue-eyed beauty was running down the hall for the protection of her room. The maid, the housekeeper and the spouse all accosted me and said “Some hot shot management guy you are — you just got led around by the nose by a two and a half-year-old!”

Moral of the story is not to allow ringing in your ears that gets in the way of your better judgment. The best thing to do is a backflip into a martini, shaken not stirred, and forget how whole damn thing got started. Only good thing that came out of this was that I had dug up half the damn backyard.