The Parable Of The Lost Aggie Ring

The next Ring Day is just around the corner on Nov. 4, and I have one piece of advice: If you’re finally getting your Aggie gold this time around, don’t let it out of your sight.

Trust me, I know from experience. When I lost it back in May, just a month after I received it in April, I went into denial.

“You lost it?” everyone cried.

“Misplaced,” I corrected, more confidently than I felt.

The memory was fuzzy. I was at work when I slipped it off my finger absentmindedly. That evening back at home, I realized I never put it back on. It wasn’t in the pockets of my backpack or pants nor on my desk the next day.

I was sure I hadn’t really lost it. It was probably in somewhere in my room or car. I turned out drawers and sifted through piles of clothes and papers, dumped out boxes, swept the floors the floors and felt between couch cushions. All I found was a stale cheeto and a penny. I even picked through a week old trash bag — the same one in which I had heard a suspicious thump when I was cleaning out my backpack hastily one morning before a hiking trip. But between the maggoty meat styrofoam, old granola bar wrappers and rotting banana peels, no gold was glinting. My heart sank.

How did I let this happen? I thought. This was my Aggie ring, a gift from my parents that didn’t come cheap and a timeless symbol of my years at Texas A&M. How could I have been so careless?

Days turned into weeks and weeks into months. Finally I dragged myself up to the Wehner facilities office and asked if they had seen a ring.

“When did you lose it?” they asked.

“Three months ago.”

I grimaced. They hadn’t seen it.

I glumly went back home and filled the form on the Association’s website, reporting a lost ring.

Three weeks later, still no response.

School started in full swing and as the weeks went by, sure I was bummed, but I started accepting that I may never find it. Getting a new one was certainly out of the question for the time being, at least for a few more years. I would just have to live without it. It wouldn’t be the end of the world.

Around this time, I woke up one Saturday morning, an away game weekend, when I had a ton of free time. I decided today was the day I would try once and for all to find my ring. I challenged myself: it was not a matter of if I’d find the ring; it was when.

Time to back to square one. I heaved my backpack out to the living room floor and pulled out the crumpled papers and binders and endless dull pencils and began rummaging through the biggest pockets and the front pocket, the side pockets. Still nothing but junk. Finally I reached the middle pocket. I unzipped it — a half-opened pack of tissues, prayer beads, a quarter.

I felt down the curve of the pocket which dipped down into my backpack further than I remembered. Suddenly, like a magnet, my fingers closed in on something solid and cool to the touch.

I pulled my hand from the pocket. Shiny and gold as the day my parents presented it to me in April, it was my Aggie ring.

I was shocked. After four months, it had been with me the whole time. It had been with me on a hiking trip to Arkansas, to Orlando with my family, at the beach, Waco, and all manner of adventures in between.

Slightly dazed that I had found the ring within minutes of starting my search, I leapt up and showed my roommates who were overjoyed with me. I don’t think I had ever been so excited to find something in my entire life.

Taking a cue from the biblical parable of the lost coin, I called over some friends that night to celebrate the finding of the ring that was lost but had been found.

Of course, I can’t say that every lost ring will turn up. But like I had to accept, it’s not the end of the world. My ring really is just a ring. All it is is a symbol. If a husband loses his wedding band, it doesn’t make him any less of his spouse to his wife. No one is less of an Aggie without a ring.

Big as they are, Aggie rings represent something so much bigger. For the rest of my life (knock on wood) my ring will be a symbol of my years at Texas A&M, the friends I’ve made, the amazing adventures I’ve had, the things I’ve learned inside and especially outside the classroom, and the values and traditions of one of the warmest and most genuine student bodies you could ever know.

Even if you lose your ring, you can’t lose what it stands for.