THE RING

I don't remember how I came to own it; probably I sent in a cereal box top and twenty-five cents. It was called an "Atom Ring," and for me, a skinny, shy ten year old girl, the ring was magic. The time was toward the end of World War II.

The ring had a bullet-shaped "Atom-holder" mounted on top of it. To see the atoms one would pull a cap off one end of the bullet and peer into a small piece of glass that fitted like a lens inside the half still attached to the ring. It was inside this half that the atoms could be seen.

You would have to take the ring to a dark place -- a closet or inner hallway -- and then hold it close to your eye. If you looked carefully, you could see little white sparks whizzing around inside the bullet. I shared the ring with my teacher at school and with my school friends. No one made fun of me or told me that I was imagining things, because everyone could see very plainly that there were, indeed, atoms in the ring. They were there, like a display of shooting stars.

Thinking back on it, I cannot imagine what it was that I was seeing. It wasn't atoms, of course, but certainly it was something, not just my imagination. That ring was my most prized possession and I felt important for having such a wonderful thing.

My closest friend sent for one of the rings, too, and this was enough reason in those days to form a club. The two of us had weekly meetings; we put dues of 5 cents in a black bank I owned. We could withdraw money for penny candy but had to sign our name on a paper and place a drop of our blood next to it. To us this was serious business, for we had atoms in our possession.

Eventually my bullet fell off the ring and I placed it for safekeeping in that black bank alongside the red-splotched paper and the noisy nickels. My best friend and I joined the Girl Scouts and the atom club faded out of our lives. As I grew out of the cereal box top stage and into my teen years, I gave many of my childhood toys away, but the ring always remained safe in that black bank. Even after the key got lost I could pick the lock open when I wanted to see if the atoms were still whizzing around. And they always were.

Somewhere during my dating years I forgot all about the ring and the bank. College, marriage and babies took up the future, and I never thought about the ring again.

Many years later, sometime after my daughter Bryn left for college, I was sorting through the years of accumulated trivia in her room and I thought again of my atom ring and wondered what ever happened to it. Probably during one of her yearly spring cleanings my mother tossed it out, just as I was doing with some of my own daughter's childish leftovers.

It would be fun to have that ring today, because I certainly would enjoy an adult look into it. I have no doubt that the atoms I saw as a child would still would be whizzing around inside. I would like to share it with my children and grandchildren, letting them touch a small bit of the past. And best of all, perhaps they could feel with me some of the magic of that time so long ago, when cereal box tops provided treasures of metal instead of plastic, when clubs and candy could be had for nothing more than a pinprick of blood, and when the only things children knew of atoms were that they were confined to rings.