Flash Mob

I started a jewelry-making class last Monday.  Since long-ago nights passed heavily in my mom's lap when I twirled a yellow gold ring over the loose skin of her pinky, I've wanted to learn to shape metal.  In college, I enrolled in Welding, but our efforts were focused on tractor-repair and cow-bells; the intricate web of gold I would have woven as a reciprocal gift for the ring my mom eventually gave me would have been melted in a flash by the arc welder.  I did love the crackle of the light as it ate and shat a line of metal into the join.

Due to time constraints and the effect of jilted investors left with nothing but grandma's necklaces to melt into their portfolios, I'll confine myself to brass, copper and silver for now.  In the meantime, I'll ponder quietly the inflated reputation that attends the inflated price of the prettier metal.  Gold doesn't really do much but it sure looks nice on our appendages.  So be it.

On our first day, we were handed two small scraps of copper and brass.  I eyed the copper in wonder, remembering the articles about cable theft I'd read recently.  Young men had broken into a wind farm risking electrocution at 220,000 volts for a clumsy tramp through a magnetic field on the other end of which was some copper wire.  And copper is worth less than gold?

I started with the brass so I could finally have the triumph of grabbing my own brass ring.  I will put it in the corner, I fantasized, just above my writing machine and I will lunge at it every minute or two, tugging at the leather belt wound around my belly to restrain me in my chair.  If I only had a horse...

I cut the brass, filed it, annealed it, shaped it and soldered it.  I was slow and methodical because no one told me that I could shape it more completely after I joined the straight edges with the solder.  My brass ring fit over the knots and knobs of my first finger perfectly.  I dropped the wide, fat, smooth, perfectly round evidence of my control issues into the slow cooker of acid pickle that will eat my skin and clean my metal or both if I'm so inclined.  As class finished, I returned to claim my prize.  The only object remaining in the hazy lavender liquid of the ersatz pickle barrel was a mangled turd of metal, vaguely reminiscent of an ellipse but hammered out of its round audacity ensuring it could grace only those fingers held patiently under the wheels of two-ton trucks while they practice parallel parking.

I didn't make this piece of shit.

"Um, hmm,"  I said.

The instructor said class was ending and ordered that I clean or replace all supplies I'd used over the evening.  Seven students marched past me to leave.  I glimpsed the rings they'd made and my mind manufactured accusations against each one of my fellow novice artisans.

"Yeah, um, my ring?" I asked.  I thought, one of you fucking assholes left me with a shitpile and it stinks.  Give me my ring.

And they were all gone.

I've spent the last week preparing for the moment this evening when I ask for my ring back.  I've imagined the passive speech in which I innocently request that everyone consider checking their rings against their fingers.  I've thought I could ask to inspect all rings and declaim thievery as counter-productive to adult education.  Finally, I dreamed of a flash mob descending on class tonight at 6:06 PM to slowdance to a modified version of this all-time great.  Yeah, the doggone ring is mine.  I'll love it endlessly.

I know, I know, it was either an honest mistake (likely made by one of the blind students in class who also has no sense of touch) or my ring is long gone.  I'll make more and get over it.  But I hate missing the brass ring.



PS- Anyone else think it's pretty tragic that the woman being held in Iran for her funwalk with friends across the border from Iraq is going to be released to the US because of her breast lumps and precancerous cells.  Um, duh, I hope she is a spy because with that kind of publicized pre-existing condition, she's shit out of luck for health insurance.  Maybe she's from Massachusetts.