If You Liked it Then You Shoulda Put a Ring on It

In her song, Beyonce is talking about a guy putting a ring on a girl, but when people get married, guys get rings too. This practice has resulted in a classic single girl spy move, the ring check. As any girl knows, ring checking is that thing you do to any new guy you meet where you try and get a quick glance of his left hand to check for hardware. I don't want to brag, but I am kind of a pro at the ring check. I can be incredibly stealthy. I can ring check anywhere, from a crowded room to the pew of a church. If I were going to level ring checkers, naming the levels after fictional spies, I would probably have to say that I am a Sydney Bristow level ring checker. From the limited research I've done, most girls start ring checking when they are about sophomores in college, so I've had some time to practice. I have a plethora of moves, from the casual glance, the "purse check," where it looks like I'm adjusting the strap of my purse, but I'm really ring checking as I turn my head, the "shoe check," which works best if your shoes have laces or your pant leg gets caught on the point of your pointy-toed dress shoe, the "I'm going to just look at your hand because we're not talking right now" that is appropriate when the guy is somewhat far away so there really isn't a need to be discrete. There are more, and each girl probably has her own unique technique.

This morning, I had to take the Praxis PLT, which is a test that all teachers have to pass to be able to keep teaching. This means that this morning, I also had to wake up at 5:30, drive 45 minutes, and sit in a desk for two and a half hours answering multiple choice and short answer questions. I'm not bitter about it or anything-I love waking up at 5:30 on a Saturday when it is 20 degrees outside. But back to my point, I was sitting in a classroom, looking around, waiting for my test to start. Because it's a test for teachers, most of the people taking it were girls, but there were a few guys. And, before I knew it, I was looking at one guy's hand and noticing probably the widest wedding band I've ever seen (perhaps his wife, being a girl, is familiar with the ring check and didn't want there to be any confusion or room for interpretation). Whoa, I thought to myself. Not whoa because his ring was so huge, but whoa because I just ring checked that guy and didn't realize I was doing it. Have I reached a point where the ring check is just a reflex that I don't control? Is it something I do without thinking??

Is it like breathing???

Before I got too freaked out by my apparently uncontrolled ring-check reflex, I decided to do some reflecting. Why do girls ring check? I came up with a few reasons:

1) Maybe it is an unintentional thing we do to make sure that we don't make a move on a taken guy. I mean, if I get married, I don't really want other women flirting with my husband, so maybe the ring check is something nice and polite that we do. Like we just want to check so we know how we should act towards the guy. We're just looking out for each other, making sure we don't encroach on someone else's territory. Solidarity sister!

(While this makes girls sound nice and respectful, I can't ever remember really thinking this before I ring checked.)

2) It's some strange science thing that is somehow related to a biological mating impulse.

(I don't really know that much about science, and I have a sneaking suspicion that this theory comes out of the fact that I really love the show Bones because it sounds like something that Dr. Brennan would say.)

3) It is a hopeful glance. As a girl, I can sometimes do this thing where I see a guy, and before I know it, I am seeing our entire future in my head. I'm usually mentally shopping my way through the Pottery Barn catalogue decorating our living room before I catch myself. So, I think we ring check for potential. If there's no ring, maybe he's the guy for me. Maybe this is the beginning of the end of my singleness! Maybe the Cherry Red Manhattan Leather Recliner can finally be mine!!

As much as I wish that theory 3 wasn't the correct theory, I kind of think it is. (I'm a little upset about doing it at test. I blame a friend of mine who once told me a story about how she got asked out on a date during the SAT. This story has placed somewhere deep in my subconscious that standardized tests are a place to meet boys. I'm pretty sure that her story ended up with her not doing as well as she wanted to on the SAT because she was distracted by the boy, so I should totally know better...oh well). I think 3 is right because usually, when there's a ring there, I feel a tiny twinge of sadness in the pit of my stomach.

This tiny twinge has no place in my year of me! So, what do I do? Stop the ring check? Since apparently I'm doing it without thinking about it first, this might be kind of hard. So, I'm going to have to come up with another option. Perhaps all the rings I see can be a reminder to me that God has a unique plan for each of us. Part of that guy's plan is being married. Part of my plan is being single. And I'm thankful for that, so I guess it's time that I started being thankful for the rings that remind me that God cares about and has control over my relationship status--even when they aren't on my finger.