Goldie Goby’s wedding ring, recovered this week by a Blacktip Island scuba diver, rests at the Blacktip Island Interdenominational Church after Goby’s refusal to accept the ring’s return. (photo courtesy of Liesbeth Busman)
A Blacktip Island scuba diver who found a lost wedding ring on the Wahoo Reef dive site was stunned Tuesday when the ring’s owners refused to take it back.
“It was a classic scuba-treasure story—diver finds long lost wedding ring,” diver Barry Sennett said. “Only, when I tracked down the owner, Goldie wanted no part of it. Told me to throw it back. Then she took a swing at me.
“Selling it didn’t seem right, so I gave it to the pastor,” Sennett said. “He’s one who started this mess, marrying Goldie and Rusty when any damn fool knew it wouldn’t last.”
Goldie Goby said the ring was an unwelcome reminder of unhappy days.
“It brought back bad memories, for me and for Rusty,” she said. “When I came up from that dive last year and my ring was missing, we took it as a sign from God. And if God don’t want us together, who are we to argue?
“We been happily unmarried for the last 13 months,” Goby said. “Now folks think we’re hitched again? Uh-uh. God cast us asunder and Barry ain’t gonna stick us back together. I don’t even know how he found the damn ring, it was stuffed so far under that coral head.”
Rusty Goby agreed.
“Don’t know how the ring slipped off her finger, but it’s the best thing to ever happened to us,” he said. “We fought like cats and dogs the whole time we were together. The lost ring let us put all that behind us. And it was a whole lot cheaper than a divorce.
“God split us up,” Goby said. “We answer to a higher authority. Anybody comes near either one of us with that ring, they’ll get a punch in the face.”
Island religious leaders refuted the couple’s claim.
“They were never not-married,” the Rev. Pierre Grunt said. “It doesn’t work like that. If it did, folks’d be chucking their rings any old time they wanted. Rusty and Goldie just got separate places to live.
“Goldie ditched that ring, not God,” Grunt said. “The ring’s at the church ‘til things are resolved. And there’s the civil side of this to be addressed, too.”
Legal experts concurred.
“Legally, they’re as married as ever, but I can’t speak to this God business,” local attorney Ferris Skerritt said. “Religion-wise, I guess it’s a bit of a Schrödinger’s wedding ring situation—they’re married and not married at the same time.
“On the legal side, they’d need an affidavit stating, in God’s eyes, they’re no longer married,” Skerritt said. “Not a burning bush or anything, just an official note from Big Man, or His representative, to make it legal.”
Goldie Goby remained adamant.
“God don’t want us together. He already made that plain as day,” she said. “Ferris’s just throwing out weasel-words, and Rev. Grunt has a conflict of interest. Anybody hands me that ring, I’m chucking it so far into the sea even God won’t find it.”
The Blacktip Times 