Lost and Found: Global Edition

Is this a bad time to mention that I left my wedding ring on a shelf in my bathroom this morning? It's been bugging me because I can feel it "missing," but now I'm especially interested in returning it to my finger ASAP after reading this amazing CNN story:

A college ring lost more than 20 years ago by a former undercover officer for the CIA has been found in an underwater cave off the coast of Africa. Steve Ruic, a writer on staff at Notre Dame College [in Ohio], received an e-mail about two weeks ago from a professional diver from Germany. Wilfried Thiesen wrote that he had found a class ring bearing the college's name while diving off Mauritius.

The ring was engraved with the year '76. The ring was missing the thin portion on the underside that ordinarily carries its owner's name. Ruic publicized the discovery in both an e-mail to college staff and a newsletter to alumni, but no one came forward to claim it. Then, while interviewing a member of the class of 1976 for an unrelated alumni magazine story, Ruic asked Dr. Maryellen Amato Stratmann if she'd ever been to Mauritius.

"I couldn't believe it," Ruic said. "She said, 'No, but Clare Cavoli Lopez has."'

Sure enough, it turned out to be Ms. Lopez' long-lost ring. I experienced a more believable, less astounding version of this story while I was in college. I discovered while home here in Nashville one summer that my missing high school ring had been found in a softball glove at my church gym. I'd borrowed a glove from someone the summer after I graduated in 1991 and left the ring inside accidentally. Nearly four years later, the ring turned up. I can't claim that any strangers tracked me down, and the ring barely crossed Davidson County, much less an ocean, but I was still pretty amazed to find it.

When it comes to my wedding ring, I'm likely to be in sight of my bathroom shelf a little sooner than my next (and first) trip to Mauritius, but I'll still be heading straight there after work. Gulp. [Image: AP via CNN.com]