Friday, March 06, 2009

The ring

I'm riding the train, and I swear there's a ring under the seats opposite me, but it can't be, no, it can't be - and you can't just dive, crow-like, after everything that glints, because you end up picking up a lot of tin foil and washers and looking like a jack ass. But after a long, long look (I am riding to the end of the line) I determine that no shit it really is, it's a fat, men's gold ring with a setting (how do you lose something like that? I guess you're playing with it and it drops and there is only so much you can look and look between everyone's knees during rush hour and besides it's your stop and you have to go to work and you didn't hear it hit the ground so maybe it fell into your attaché case after all). Aaaaand (where was I?) and so I am on the train and we are nearing the end of the line and now there aren't that many people on the train so I could go for it, I would just have to deal with getting my prissy lecturing clothes dirty but JUST THEN a mean, mean old man gets on with his granddaughter and they sit right across from me (she is turned around in her seat, looking out the window at the passing city and singing quietly to herself and he tells her to turn around and shut up and she obeys, neither fearful nor pouting because she is used to him by now), the two of them sitting right there above my ring, and he's catching my eye every time I try to steal a glance at it and glowering at me and god knows I'm not going to crawl beneath their legs but maybe, just maybe they will get off before I will, but they don't, they get off at my stop (which is, I admit, not quite the end of the line but the second-last stop), and maybe I can grab it after they get up but no, there's no time, it's my stop and I have to go to work.

7 comments:

Kate and/or Mike said...

You should've picked it up. Awkward, yes, but that wouldn't have gone down as one of the most embarrassing moments of your life. And when are you going to run into those people again, and who cares what they think of you if you do? They'd probably be jealous that you spotted it and not them, and curious about what you did with it. You could've brought it to one of those "cash for gold! cash for gold!" places. Then again, I probably would've turned it into to the police, hoping that nobody would claim it in the standard 30 days. (I'm kind of afraid of karma).

M said...

If I had started rooting around underneath him and his granddaughter, I am pretty sure this guy would have either punched me in the face or kept the ring for himself (after punching me in the face).

Kate and/or Mike said...

Or put the ring on, THEN punched you in the face! (Like how Ace Ventura checked to see if any of the superbowl rings had lost a stone.)

M said...

At which point he would have been invisible (like Gyges).

Kate and/or Mike said...

You mean Frodo.

M said...

Oops, yeah.

Christian said...

We waits for the mean man to get off. Then we snatches my precious.