As if it weren’t already obvious enough, I’m about to tell a story that actually occurred this weekend and contains a fair bit of personal embarrassment. Just a warning.

So, I found my wedding ring on Saturday. Yeah, let me tell a bit of back story first.

About two years ago, I was out un-burying my car from several feet of snow. Upon completing the task, I took off my gloves, entered my car, and drove to work in that order. Halfway to work, I felt a noticeable lack of weight on my ring finger. My wedding ring was missing. I panicked at first, and then remembering that I took off my gloves before getting in the car, I panicked further and assumed the worst: that the ring was now buried somewhere within the depths of white snowflakes collected and mounted around the driveway. I got home that night and discovered that a kind neighbor with a plow had driven through our alleyway and helpfully plowed our driveway. I presumed the ring lost forever.

Fast-forward to Saturday afternoon.

I’m cleaning out my car for the first time in two years. As I’m removing wrappers, pop cans, and plastic breakfast sandwich containers, I notice the briefest glint of metal on the floor of the drivers side. There, buried beneath several years’ worth of gravel, dirt, and other miscellaneous shoe-barnacles and natural stowaways lies my wedding ring. It had been underfoot this entire time. Two years. I could hardly believe it myself.

My wife was never really that concerned with the fact that I had lost my ring in the first place. Ever since becoming pregnant with Caleb (our first child), she has constantly been sans-ring herself through two pregnancies as her finger size expanded and collapsed with her weight gain and subsequent loss. We also trust each other enough in the presence of others that we don’t feel the need for a I’M MARRIED AND THIS IS MY RING FORCEFIELD SO BACK OFF sort of protection from lecherous, bloodthirsty “single people”. Indeed, my wonderful wife’s first words to me upon hearing the proclamation of my discovery: “does that mean I have to start wearing my ring again?”

As a matter of fact, it does.