The One Ring

Here begins the tale of the one ring. The one ring first entered our story on Aug 14, 1998, when it was placed on Derrick's finger. From the start, the ring was a restless tenant; every year when Derrick went outside to put up Christmas lights it would slip off his finger. Sometimes it would stay lost for hours, such as when it fell two stories off of the balcony into some bushes, where it was not found until the next day. Other times, the ring would show up a mere five minutes later. And so, when Derrick went out in December of 2003 to hang lights again, he didn't take the ring off first. After all, he had never yet failed to find the ring when it disappeared. When the moment came and the ring made its escape, Derrick noticed (as always) almost immediately. Since night had already fallen, he wasn't concerned when an immediate search of the area failed to turn up the ring. Worry set in, however, when a two-hour search of the entire front porch yielded no result. Fear began to whisper in his ear. Soon every free minute was spent outside digging through the soil, raising mighty piles of leaves to sift through. "Filthy squirrelses! They stole it from us! Wicked! Tricksy! False! Told you I did, my precious!" After many days of fruitless searching and sleepless nights, Derrick finally summoned a mighty wizard with his powerful metal-detecting wand. In days of old this wizard had used his metal-detecting wand to find other lost rings, civil war artifacts, and all manner of valuables. But even the wizard, after hours of combing the yard, was forced to admit defeat. Although he tried to hold fast to hope, dark depression gripped hold of Derrick's heart. Every happy thought was banished; no longer did he smile or laugh. He could not bring himself to perform the most mundane task (such as updating his website). And still, whenever he found himself near the front porch his eyes again turned downward, and his feet led him in circles around the periphery. He now wore a lesser ring, a poor substitute, that had a single advantage over the One Ring- the lesser ring, much smaller, fits snugly on Derrick's finger and does not slip.

---

Stay tuned for part two, publication date unknown....