German composer, Richard Wagner wrote a series of four operas, which he entitled The Ring of the Niebelung. Took him over 20 years to write, and it takes 15 hours to perform the whole thing. It is currently called The Ring Cycle.
Don’t worry, I won’t put you through anything like that. My story of The Ring will only take you just a few minutes to read, and I plan to write it in the next hour or so. 

It’s May, 1964. My mom had just passed away.

A few days after the funeral, while Marjorie (my girlfriend at the time) and I were at the movies trying to take a break and catch our breath, my sociopathic brother let himself into my apartment and ransacked the place.

He stole a few things.

But most importantly, he stole my mom’s wedding and engagement rings, which she had promised me before she died.

I intended to offer those rings to Marjorie when I asked her to marry me in the next few days.

I did a little research and found that my brother had technically committed grand larceny by taking the rings from my apartment before anything had gone through probate.

I angrily marched into the office of a very wise man, the Probate Judge of Charleston. I told him I wanted my brother extradited and charged.

The judge looked at me and calmly asked,
“Do you really want to testify against your brother and put him in jail?”

Then he asked a better question…
“What do you really want?”

I paused, then answered, “I want the rings back.”

He reminded me that I believed my brother was a coward. “Then treat him like one.”  he said.  “Write him a letter.   Just tell him you’ve spoken to the Probate Judge of Charleston.  Say that if you don’t send the rings back to me by a certain date, I’ll start the process to extradite you back to Charleston.”

So that’s what I did.

I received the rings in the mail within a week on June 9, 1964

Remember the question: “What do you really want?”

Now, why did I want those rings so badly?

Not just because I planned to propose to Marjorie with them. They had a deep family history, very personal to me.
My mom had told me the story many times over the years.

It was a nice, spring day in 1925, she and her boyfriend, my future dad, were walking in New York, and passed close to City Hall. She said to him, facetiously,

“I hear they perform marriages in there.”

He grinned and said something like, “Why don’t we check that out?”

So they did.
They walked into City Hall, got a Marriage License, stopped at Woolworth’s for a set of dime store rings, and walked back in to get married.
They used those “dime store rings” for a decade. Then, for their 10th wedding anniversary, my dad bought her those diamond wedding and engagement rings. 
Fast forward to 1943.  My dad died, leaving my mom with a 10 year old (my brother) and a 4 year old (moi) to love, care for, and raise.
Sometime around 1950, she told me she had to hock those rings to buy my brother a car. As long as she paid the interest, the pawn shop wouldn’t sell them.

I remember her paying interest for several years, cause I mailed the check for her.

Then, around 1958, when I got a part time job at the Post Office, I took great pride in paying off the rest of her loan and brought those rings home to her.

So yeah…

I’ll be damned if I was going to let my sociopath brother steal those rings from me.
On June 9, 1964, I gave those rings to my future wife, Marjorie.

She has worn them for 61 years as of August 29. Just 3 weeks away.

Yes, that’s what I really wanted. Enuf.