another time. But I Thought of one part of that personal saga would be post worthy.
Namely what happened the weekend after we got engaged...
My wife's best friend, Jessica, was very excited of course. Jess is like a sister.
Well, more like a Cosmic Twin. And her ability to become the catalyst for chaos
and mayhem is only surpassed by my own.
I didn't have a ring to stick on my finger to mark myself as a claimed man. Jess
wanted to help. I was over at her place and she had an idea. She had been
engaged once but it was broken off. She still had the ring she had given her man.
She felt that I should wear it.
I wasn't too keen on the idea. It was a gold ring. Not my color of choice for a
ring. It looked like it was too small. It was thin.... any excuse I could think of.
Jessica insisted. She insisted to the point where she deftly snatched my left hand
and jammed the ring on my finger.
Well, I was right about it being small
My Ring finger is a 9. This ring was maybe a 6.
I tried to get it off but it wouldn't budge. I couldn't even move it toward my
knuckle. How was it even possible that it got on my finger in the first place?
It was so small that circulation started to visibly cut off.
We tried butter, cooking oil, a tiny crowbar. No dice. My finger was sore from
all the tugging and pulling. Making it swell up any more was just futile.
It was late Sunday night and I had work in the morning. I said that I'd
worry about it tomorrow and went home. I figured that the swelling would go down
over night.
The next morning my finger was even more swollen.
It was also numb at the tip, rather purple looking, and very tender. This ring
had to come off. If it didn't my finger was going to shrivel up and die and the
hobbit jokes would never stop.
My wife, who worked at the same company, (gee I wonder how we met) saw the
finger and suggested soap and water to get it off. So off to the bathroom for me.
I didn't think that was going to work because of the results from last night
but I wanted the ring off and I may as well try.
The building we worked in had a small unisex bathroom. I poped in and coated my
finger with soap but it just wouldn't work. When I pushed it forward, the ring
would catch against my skin. It didn't matter how lubed my finger was, the
ring wasn't moving.
Thoughts of some crazy doctor with a saw danced in my head and decided that if
I was going to mangle my finger it was going to be my fault! Not some quack with
a circular saw.
One of my friends at work was training to become an EMT. As I walked back from
the bathroom to my desk, I passed his and I had an idea. I asked him if he had
a latex glove. He did and he got it for me.
Carefully I cut one of the fingers off the glove. I left two long strips at the
the base of the finger so that I could pull the finger-glove under the ring.
With the glove on my finger I could pull back on it and that would keep my skin
flat. Lubed up latex is very slippery *COUGH* and so the ring should come right off.
This plan had one flaw. I only have two hands and one of them was what I was
working on. I needed help.
Now my wife and I didn't want to draw any attention to our selves as a couple.
The less work knew about our relationship the better. We had been dating for
several months and nobody at work had a clue. We wanted to keep it that way.
So, instead of asking for her help, I talked to my future EMT friend again. He
agreed, somewhat reluctantly, to help me out. We both scooted into the bathroom
and locked the door.
Unfortunately my supervisor saw us.
My supervisor could best be described as an ultra conservative psycho hose beast
who's goal in life was to smash any shenanigans within a seven mile radius.
You could say she didn't like me much.
So when she saw me and my friend bolt into the bathroom she tip toed up and put
an ear to the door.
She heard me groaning and she heard my friend straining.
She heard me when I said "Pull it! Come on pull harder!"
She heard him when he replied "It's so slippery! I can't! Why does it have to be so big?"
She also heard me yell "It's in! It's in! Go go go!"
And finally she heard us both as we both whooped and hollered with glee,
simultaneously as the ring slipped over the finger-glove and off my poor finger.
When we opened the door, slightly flushed and sweaty, she was standing right
there with a look of horror on her face. We looked at her and then looked at
the finger of a latex glove that I held in my hand which was stretched out and
dripping with a white milky substance. (DAMNIT IT WAS SOAP!)
We both spent the better part of the day trying to explain that we were NOT gay
and that no, we didn't just have sex in the bathroom using a latex finger as a
condom.
I don't think my supervisor believed a word of it until my wife changed her last
name to mine a few months later. Even then I think she felt it was a cover.
You're god, damnit! 