The Lost Ring
I was on a bus to the office. As usual, I picked a window seat on the right side, on the second row of the upper deck. I was listening to a spiritual audio series. For some reason, perhaps influenced by the audio, I began to observe myself, both internally and externally. That's when I realized my engagement ring was missing—a ring I've worn for a very long time.
Even though the audio was meant to calm me, I panicked. I removed my earpods and started thinking.
I started backtracking my memory, trying to figure out when and why I had taken off my ring. I knew I couldn't have just lost it; I must have intentionally removed it. It fits me perfectly. Without much effort, I remembered taking it off for a pull-up exercise I had done two days ago. During pull-ups, the ring hurts my finger, and there's a possibility it could bend under my weight. So, before the exercise, I had put it in the right pocket of my shorts. It was a huge relief to be certain about why and where I had left it.
I called my wife and asked her to check my shorts in the laundry bag, where I remembered putting them the next day. She checked, but she said she had put the clothes in the washing machine the previous day, and we had then put them on the clothesline on the balcony to dry. I mistakenly told her they were the military camouflage shorts. She checked and found that the ring wasn't there. To make sure she was looking at the right shorts, I asked her to send me a photo. Indeed, she had checked the right pair.
It was then that I realized I had worn the military shorts three days ago, not the day I did the pull-ups. But I couldn't remember which shorts I had worn two days ago. I thought to myself, "Can you remember what you ate two days ago, or what clothes you wore? It's not easy, is it?!"
Anyway, she told me that she and my in-laws had started looking everywhere, even checking the washing machine drum. They couldn't find it. It's a gold ring, and more importantly, it's my engagement ring. I felt stupid for taking it off and not putting it back on. My wife tried to calm me down, saying it would be somewhere at home and not to worry. It didn't calm me, though. I told her I would find it myself once I got home.
I started working at the office, but the thought of the lost ring bothered me every few minutes, making for a terrible workday.
After lunch, I left the office. I took a ride with a colleague to a midpoint, then took a bus to the main station, another bus home, and finally walked for 20 minutes to reach my house. During that entire trip, my mind was consumed with a single thought: "Where the heck could my ring be, and what if I never find it?!" I arrived home, stressed and anxious. My wife welcomed me and, trying to calm me down, asked how work was. But I just wanted to find the ring, so I immediately started searching on the balcony.
I found two pairs of shorts there: the camouflage pair and a green one. I remembered the green pair was the one I had worn. But after carefully checking both pockets multiple times, I couldn't find the ring. We usually shake the clothes before hanging them to dry. I worried it might have fallen somewhere on the floor or even off the balcony and onto the street below. My fear increased. I went back inside and told my wife I couldn't find it on the balcony. Then I started removing all the clothes from the laundry bag, hoping it had fallen to the bottom. It wasn't there either.
I thought it might have been on me while I slept that night, so I searched my bed, removing the sheets and blankets. I couldn't find it. My anxiety and fear grew even more. I went up to the roof where I had done the pull-ups and searched everywhere. Still, I couldn't find it. I started losing hope!
Suddenly, my wife remembered a story about her father finding a 10 Rupee coin stuck to the rubber seal of the washing machine drum. The coin had been hidden under the seal, stuck right to it. She had mentioned it when I first started searching the washing machine a few minutes earlier, but I hadn't found it—maybe because I didn't know I could pull back the rubber seal to look. She went back and found the ring there, right next to a 10 Rupee coin.
I felt an instant rush of relief. I thanked her and shouted out loud to myself, "I will never take this off again!"
What a relief!
TLDR; I found my lost ring. I had removed it and put it in the right pocket of my shorts before doing pull-ups two days ago. It was found under the washing machine's rubber seal.
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