The other day, I was at the office in autopilot mode working on a low maintenance task, and started feeling drowsy from the jet lag. You’d think after 10 days in Japan I’d be over it, but for the last year I’ve been going back and forth so much between Paris and Tokyo that I’m essentially in a state of perpetual sleep confusion.
I know in those cases all I can do is go out of the building and take a quick walk outside to reset my internal clock. It was already 6pm, which is night time in Japan, so I couldn’t count on the sun to wake me up, but I knew the fresh late summer air would help.
I walked into the Seven Eleven across the street from my office building, started to browse halfheartedly along with the other surrounding corporate zombies out for a quick shot of sugar or caffeine before the evening, when I noticed my wedding ring was no longer on my finger. It had become a comfort reflex for me to feel for it with my thumb, and sometimes even spin it around my finger a little. But as I unconsciously felt for it while walking around the convenience store, I realized it was gone. I checked my hand, and surely enough, all that was left was the groove around my finger where the ring used to be.
I felt my legs go weak, and my brain switched from zombie mode to red alert mode in an instant. I started backtracking all the way to the office, asking around, retracing every step I had taken all day. It boggled my mind to think that something so tiny could be that valuable. I remember thinking, I thought, one day (the later the better) I was going to be buried with this ring, and now it’s going to end up somewhere, where no one will ever find it, or maybe it would be found, but by whom, and what would that person do with it? Throw it in the trash?
I thought the odds of someone taking them to the police station were better than if I’d lost it in Paris, but they were still incredibly slim. I kept checking for another hour, checking my bag, asking people I’d met during the day if they had noticed whether my ring was missing, no one had. Their opinions on the matter were just as good as mine: the truth was, they had no clue.
I ended up telling my wife, who told me, well, we can’t do anything about it, and maybe I should just buy a new one on our tenth anniversary. Still, I kept searching for more.
I asked at the metro station, and the employee there told me they had found several rings that day on the line I was taking, but not at the time I took the train. I was just puzzled at how many people shared my experience, if every single day even a couple of rings are lost on that line, not to mention in this city. I backtracked to the section of the platform where I’d taken the train that morning, and just had to look down to feel shock at the amount of foot traffic happened in that place on a daily basis. With every step I observed, I realized the likelihood of finding that ring was slim to none. I remembered I had adjusted my loose sock in my shoe by sliding a finger under my foot while waiting for the train that morning, and thought the ring might have slipped out. I checked my shoe but couldn’t find anything.
Seeing the number of people walking back and forth, I started realizing my only hope was that if it was still at my apartment. I didn’t really believe it, but I was still determined to check, exhausted but not intending to give up without a thorough search. This wasn’t happening, I would find that ring, even if I’d have to go J. Edgar Hoover on the whole place.
I walked into the apartment with the determination of a thousand Stasi agents, and I just stopped dead in my tracks three steps later, when I found the ring lying there on my bed, shining under the artificial light. I gushed a sigh of relief, and contacted everyone I’d told about it, first of all my wife of course.
I have no idea what happened. I must have felt like the ring was itching during the night, and, half asleep, I must have taken it off. But that had never happened to me before. A good friend of mine had already told me, sometimes I lose things without a single clue of what happened. He calls that pulling pranks on oneself. I like that expression, because, and I’m sure most, if not all people, can relate to that, sometimes it really feel like your past self just wanted to have a good laugh, and sent your future self purposefully on a wild goose chase. I’m happy I found my ring, and tomorrow morning, just like every day of my life, I’ll make sure to check if it’s still on my finger when I wake up.