Reaching for the brass ring (or better yet, gold or platinum)
My antique ring. I happened to snag the photos off the eBay auction when we bought it, and I happened to be able to find the photos on my computer. (Yes, if you were wondering, being that detail-oriented does also make life a lot more difficult sometimes; thanks for caring.) I’m sure I have photos of me wearing my original ring too, but that was PDC (pre-digital-camera) and I’d have to dig the prints out of a box and scan them, which is not going to happen right now. The date on the photo above was April 2003, so I wore that substitute ring for 5 years — and I’d probably have worn it for 5 more, if it hadn’t broken.
A long time ago my wedding and engagement rings stopped fitting me. I had this thing where I didn’t want to get them sized up, because if later I needed them sized down, the jeweler would cut a piece of metal out of the rings. In the meanwhile, I’d picked out a pretty antique ring on eBay (under $100) and had Dean buy it for me, and I’ve been wearing it ever since. Then, a year or two ago, I finally decided I was being penny-wise and pound-foolish about my original rings, and I also decided to let go of my vanity about fitting back into the rings’ original size. The jeweler, though, is not on my usual route of survival errands (milk, bread, diapers, prescriptions,) so even after making the decision, I never got around to actually getting the rings sized up. Meanwhile my antique ring was starting to show a lot of wear. Two days ago the band finally broke through in one spot, and the split in it was pinching my finger. So today, with four busy, wiggly children in tow, I made the epic journey to the jeweler (about 10 minutes away from my house.) The owner is a really nice man who lived in the ward I grew up in, and he was asking about my siblings and my kids. He mentioned that Isaac seemed tall for his age, and I said, “I know he’s not the tallest in his class. But my husband is nearly 6′5″, so he’s got good odds to turn out tall.”
Then in the car on the way home, I got curious and was asking Ike if he was even among the taller boys in his class. He said that about half the boys in his class are around the same height he is, with the rest being shorter. Thinking about it some more, I added,
“You’re also one of the younger ones, since your birthday’s so close to the cutoff in September.”
“Yeah,” said Isaac, “I’m the third youngest.”
Me: “So with some kids being almost a year older than you, that can make a pretty big difference in height and brain development. I guess we could have even held you back a year. But you do okay, I think.”
Isaac: “Yeah; I’m even one of the smarter kids in the class.”
Me: “How did you decide that?”
Isaac: “Observation.”
