the ring thing

[metaphortunate]

Do you wear a wedding ring? Or a ring on the fourth finger of your left hand? If so, do you notice any difference in the way people treat you when you’re wearing it vs. when you’re not?

This question brought to you by the guy who was so very friendly yesterday, like making paper airplanes to amuse a grumpy sick little toddler friendly, like get off at the wrong stop because you just think you’ll sleep a little better if that guy that is soooo friendly maybe doesn’t know exactly what street you live on kind of friendly. Huh, I thought, that’s odd, I don’t get that much anymore, I really thought I had aged out of that, especially what with the kids and all, and then it occurred to me: because of the eczema flareup, I have been wearing my wedding ring on a necklace instead of on my hand.

Huh.

Comments

[lovepeaceohana]

I've never worn my wedding ring on my finger, only ever on a necklace - and since the chain broke, and I nearly lost the thing, I don't even wear that! - but the difference it made to wear it while I was pregnant was huge, in ways that are probably predictable and yet still really sad. And I don't think I'd've had the courage to ask a random stranger at the grocery to please fetch me a pregnancy test from a shelf just out of my reach if I hadn't been wearing my ring at the time.

I sometimes wonder if people would be more inclined to consider me as KK's mother if I wore a ring.

[metaphortunate]

Oh man. Mr. E and I dated for so long before we got married, I still often refer to him as my boyfriend. One time I did that in an online forum when I was pregnant with the Junebug, and the shit I got. "Don't you feel bad about being so irresponsible?"

"No," was all the explanation they deserved, though.

(Well, not because of my marital status, anyway.)

[laurajv]

I first noticed this not long after I was married, during a period of unemployment -- it was summertime, so I'd drop my husband off at work, then go rollerblade for an hour or two. I wore wrist braces that almost hid the base of my fingers, and sometimes I forgot to take my ring off before heading down the trail.

Eventually, I started wearing it on purpose, even though it got all gross & had to be cleaned every day, because I did not enjoy the CONSTANT hitting on when I didn't wear it. They had to be looking -- because it would take effort to see under the wrist brace, and because the hitting on dropped by a LOT when I wore it. Often I'd be hit on three or four times during a skate when not wearing it; when I wore it, it was more like once a week. (and the guys who ignored the ring/didn't pay attention and hit on me anyway were notably skeevier, I have to say.)

[metaphortunate]

Well, and I think that people should hit on you less when you're wearing a ring, though. That is one of its purposes, yes?

[laurajv]

well, yes, but also, people should maybe not hit on you when you are rollerblading 12 mph. and not when they have to stare underneath a piece of protective equipment to see if you are wearing a ring on your hand -- especially considering that lots of people don't wear jewelry while doing sports.

It doesn't particularly bother me that if I'm walking around dressed in ordinary clothes, I get hit on more if I happen not to be wearing my ring. It was the specific act of deliberately peering *underneath gear* to see if I was wearing a ring *that I ordinarily would not wear while exercising* that I found bizarre, and I was irked that in order to have a peaceful skate, I *had* to start doing the thing that was more uncomfortable, put me at risk of losing my wedding ring somewhere along the trail, and created a greater injury risk to my hand if I fell.

[metaphortunate]

Well, yes! Inappropriate hitting on and too much hitting on is another issue.

[kate_nepveu]

People almost never hit on me before I was engaged, so alas, I am not a useful data point. (The times I've not worn my rings since, were when I was massively pregnant.)

[snippy]

I am one of the age and size mixtures that people ignore and have been for a while. I don't even remember the last time anybody hit on me-maybe it was in the 1990s, maybe the 1970s.

[thistleingrey]

I've been wearing an unadorned titanium band since I was married a few years ago, but people did not tend to hit on me all through my twenties and early thirties. (Those few who did were prior acquaintances.) Now I'm idly curious what'd happen if I moved it, except that I'd have to explain the experiment to my daughter as well. Maybe in another year or two.

My mother (!), now a widow, continues wearing a random ring on her left hand's fourth finger specifically against attention. She doesn't want elderly men to offer to carry groceries to her car and so on, which I totally understand.

[laurajv]

My mother does this, too, with a claddagh her mother gave her. The only time she doesn't wear it is at work (she's a nurse).

[starlady]

I wore rings on those fingers when I was in middle and high school, and I stopped because it got me weird attention. (I did, and still do, look older than that; at 13 I was routinely mistaken for 10+ years older.)