Really, there is only one thing a best man has to do at a wedding: Save the ring and hand it to the person conducting the wedding ceremony. In our case it was the priest of the St. Joseph church in Lebanon, IN
  So here is my best man and college roommate, Nick Munning, frantically searching his pockets because he knows time is short. He turns them inside out and empties his wallet, dumps all the cigarettes out of the package I had given him. All to no avail.

  Mary and I were sitting in front of him totally unaware that his deodorant was rapidly failing.  Willy, my next older brother who was sitting alongside Nick, leaned over to find out what he was panicking about. "I can't find Henry's ring!" he replied as he went through his pockets one more time. Willy, who had gotten married a little over a month before, removed his own ring, handed it to Nick and said: "Here, go ahead and use this one. They will never know the difference and we will figure out later where it went".
 
 The rings were passed to the priest and eventually Mary slipped it on my finger. It seemed to go on just a bit easier than when we had tried it on the day before, but I thought: "That's what happens when you are a little nervous." Your body shrinks? Really?

  After the ceremony was over Nick, Willy and I combed the grounds as much as we could, but the ring had permanently disappeared. Nick did buy me another ring once he saved up enough money.
 
  It all was an omen of things to come, I have managed to loose three more rings since. Not that I am the  careless type, but a soccer goal is just not a good place to "store" a ring while playing. Not sure why I took them off in the first place. In the meantime my garden swallowed yet another ring last fall (2004) and so my ring-woes continue.
 
 Mary finally drew the line: "You lose one more ring and I am leaving you!". Her tone of voice was such that I now never take it off anymore.