Faithful Companion

My Clemson ring is like a boomerang. No matter how far it gets away from me, it always comes back. I’ve lost my Clemson ring four times, partly because it has never fit quite right and I’ve never gotten around to having it resized.

I first lost the ring while exiting a concert at midnight. While being pushed through the crowd, I heard the clanging sound of my ring going across the parking lot. After searching for 20 minutes and nearly being trampled, I found the ring 50 feet away, hanging on the grate of a gutter.
I lost my ring again at a sports bar while viewing a Clemson vs. UNC basketball game. After a particularly good play, we were all high-fiving one another. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted my ring sailing into a sea of people. We searched for an hour and found the ring on the bar under a napkin.

But perhaps the most unbelievable loss of my ring occurred after the bowl game against Syracuse. I was watching the game with about 20 Clemson alumni at the home of George Kolcun ’95 in New Jersey. After the game, we had a snowball fight that lasted for over an hour. Sometime during the battle, my ring slipped off. We soon realized the futility of searching our tracks because our fight had carried us throughout the neighborhood with almost a foot of snow on the ground. In April, however, George called to inform me that he had found my ring under a bush while raking his yard during spring break.

Most recently, as my fiancée and I were in the process of moving, my ring went missing again. But I know it’ll come back to me. Just as I know I’ll return to Clemson like I do every football season, I know that my ring, like some faithful companion, will find its way back to me.

– Chad Malkus ‘94