Hunting For Diamonds

I was just a kid when Mom lost her ring. I don't remember what it looked like, but I do know that it had a diamond in it. It must've been pretty valuable, because my Dad offered a $100 reward to anyone that found it. Dad was the cheapest man ever put on this Earth- for him to offer money for anything was a pretty sure sign that he wanted that ring back. The ring had been a gift to my mother from her parents, so on top of the monetary value, it had sentimental value. Plus Mom was scared to death of her parents- if they ever found out the ring was missing there would be hell to pay. At first the reward offer was made to my brothers and me. We turned the house upside down in hopes that we would find the ring. After several weeks of searching, my Dad offered the reward to all of the neighborhood kids. Every day, my brothers and I would search everywhere for that ring. We were joined by the Mogan boys and our other neighbor Amy- the topless bicycle riding girl. She was young, so it was ok with her parents if she rode around topless. We didn't even notice, or think it was wrong either. Anyway, since Amy never stopped riding her bike, she covered lots of territory- although at such speed, I don't know how she would've ever seen a ring if she passed it.

The Mogan boys looked in the most unlikely spots: they climbed a ladder and looked on our roof, they climbed trees and looked in bird nests, they even went in the VanDykes crawlspace in search of the ring. I tried to picture my mother losing her ring while climbing trees, or crawling through the neighbor's basements. The images never added up, but we didn't care. The goal was for one of us to find the ring first- we didn't care where the other kids looked.

Out of desperation, Mom went to see a psychic- "Sister Serena". She explained her plight and Sister Serena nodded, knowingly. "I see the ring- it is near an air vent", the Sister smugly said. Mom gave us the clue and we spread it throughout the neighborhood. Soon all of the kids abandoned the outdoor search and moved the search to the inside of any home that Mom had ever visited. That being fruitless, we started going with Mom anywhere she went-- grocery stores, hairdressers, anywhere that had airconditioning and air vents. We'd search these businesses high and low, searching for their air vents and hopefully finding the ring. No luck.

It had been about a year and my parents gave up. Dad called off the search and cancelled the reward offer. They confessed to my grandparents that the ring was lost and it didn't look like it would ever be found. Mom wasn't written out of the will for being irresponsible, as we all expected. Instead, my grandparents bought her a new diamond ring for her birthday that year!

As luck would have it, the following week the ring was found. Dad was tilling the garden and he saw something shimmering on the ground. The ring had probably slipped off Mom's finger while she was picking vegetables the previous year. Now Mom had two diamond rings and we were left with a great memory of the year we spent hunting for diamonds in our own back yard.