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There must be a linty planet somewhere in the stratosphere comprised of my family's runaways: socks, receipts, pen caps, coins, the tiny felt dress-up dolls my daughter fetishizes and then regularly has to mourn once they vanish. I try to stay organized, I swear I do. But what can I do, when Planet Lost Thing has such a strong gravitational pull? It's fine—so you wear mismatched socks one day, big deal—until it's not fine, because you've lost something precious and irreplaceable. Like Molly Jo Rafferty, who lost her class ring 33 years ago, when she was a high school senior at a party on the beach.  Rafferty told The Jacksonville Daily News that she scoured the beach many times that summer, looking for her ring, to no avail. Planet Lost Thing claims another prisoner.

Until, that is, a vacationer recently found the ring on that same beach and returned it to Rafferty; it turns out the ring traveled less than a mile (surviving some major hurricanes) in over three decades. (For more on how the good Samaritan found the ring's owner, read the whole story.) Rafferty says, "It made me think, maybe nothing's ever lost forever." And it makes me think, maybe Planet Lost Thing is a closer, and more benevolent, place than we ever knew.

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Message in a Bottle, Finally Delivered
A Ring Saves a Life, and Other Everyday Miracles