Wow! It seems many of us have had ring experiences, but with a wide spectrum of outcomes. With my first marriage, I was married only a year and went into the US Navy to avoid being drafted. I ended up agreeing to extend my enlistment by two years for technical school. As it turned out, I spent almost the complete two additional years going to service schools before my first shipboard duty. While onboard ship and working around high power circuits in missile control radars, I removed my ring. Those were the days of vacuum tubes and lots of circuits with 350 and 150 vdc everywhere. The one time I got shocked was from a backward wave oscillator (BWO) tube high voltage supply and did not have my ring on. Luckily, the power went into the palm of my hand and out the backside with plenty of skin in contact, so all it did was hurt really bad and teach me a lesson. When I got divorced after seven years of marriage, I kept my ring and my wife gave me back her ring. I still have them and need to remember to take them to a gold & silver exchange store some day. I also have one of those big heavy gold chains that were so popular in the '70s and still popular in the NFL and NBA.
I got married again in 2005 after many years of being single. I think this is the marriage I should have had in the beginning.:thumbsup: My wife has a cleaning solution and asks me about twice a year to let me have my ring for cleaning. That's the only time I've ever taken it off. I know all the dangers associated with rotating machinery and welding, so if I ever get close to those on a regular basis, I will take off the ring for safety.
I'm sorry if I misled some of you and you thought of something physically more alarming than the ring laying there. Since I take blood thinners, about the only physically alarming thing that occurs is feeling something wet on my hand/arm and looking down to see blood streaming out of what is not much more than a scratch. I was recently giving blood samples and the nurse was having trouble finding a vein. I told her to just scratch me and she'd have plenty of blood.
Unfortunately, that wouldn't be sanitary and their collection hardware isn't designed to take blood dripping from a stream.
Bob, indeed, it seems your story and mine are on a parallel. Everything from the type of ring to having it come off in a place it could be lost forever is similar. I'm so glad you found your ring in the trash before it was hauled off. Recently, my wife lost her remote door lock clicker for our car. She told me that it might be in the trash, so I went 'dumpster diving' inside our 65 gallon trash bin. Need I mention that the stuff at the bottom of the lowest bag in the barrel is close to smelling like a baby's poopy diaper?
After searching and discovering nothing but 'stink', I ordered a replacement. It arrived and I did the programming (a fun routine of opening/closing the driver's door and turning the key on/off within certain time limits. If I had been doing that in the Walmart parking lot, I would surely have had somebody call the cops on me.
Anyhow, I got new keys made also and everything was back to normal. Then, my wife stopped by the local resale shop to see if any of her stuff had sold. She not only had money, but also her set of keys.:cool2: It seems she was loading up our Pontiac Vibe when she realized she wanted to take something bigger and her van would be better. She had the Vibe key in her hand and inadvertently dropped it into one of the boxes as she loaded them into the van. The van's keys and Vibe keys are on separate key chains (her choice) so she didn't catch the missing key until days later.
