Much of the time, there are positive connotations to a viral social media post – a message that ricochets around the globe, often about a good deed or happy occurrence.

But that wasn’t the case for Joshua Raymond this week.

A post that went viral about a class ring found 6,000 miles away mistakenly led straight to him. And after a few days of constant phone calls, texts and Facebook queries, he only wanted to be left alone.

A man in Pennsylvania posted pictures this week on Facebook and Reddit showing a 2007 class ring that he said was found in Afghanistan. The ring is inscribed with the name Josh, the school initials KHS and the word “Rams,” an apparent reference to the school’s mascot.

The poster, Nathaniel Pogue Jr. of Reading, Pennsylvania, according to his Facebook page, apparently determined that the ring must have belonged to someone from Kennebunk High School. The school’s athletic teams are known as the Rams.

Beneath several photos of the ring, he posted the words: “(Class ring found in Afghanistan) Class of 2007, Kennebunk High School, Maine. Please help find JOSH.”

It’s not clear why the Pennsylvania man was posting about the ring, or whether he has it in his possession. A message left for Pogue seeking more information about how he came across the ring and why he determined it must have belonged to a graduate of Kennebunk High School was not returned Thursday.

But Raymond, a member of KHS Class of 2007, sure learned plenty about the ring.

Raymond said he got his first hint of what he calls “the class ring debacle” late Wednesday night when his wife woke him up to tell him people were asking her about it on social media.

“It was like 11:30 and I was just, ‘it’s a story and it will pass on Facebook,’ ” said Raymond, who then went back to sleep. But in the morning, he started getting texts and social media messages about what was assumed to be his long-lost class ring. Raymond was the only Joshua in the 2007 Kennebunk High graduating class and the names of the people in the class are readily available online. So people figured it must have been his.

Raymond said he told those who contacted him that he never even had a class ring.

“I have no idea who this person is. I’ve never been to Afghanistan and it wouldn’t take much more than a cursory look to see it wasn’t mine,” he said. For instance, the color of the ring’s gemstone is red, while Kennebunk High’s colors are blue and white.

At first, Raymond calmly told people who contacted him that the ring wasn’t his. “Then my mom and my sister contacted me and said, ‘Is this yours?’ because they were getting flooded,” he said.

Kennebunk High School also was inundated, according to Principal Susan Cressey.

“We’ve been getting so many calls, I would say in the hundreds,” Cressey said.

“People have been wonderful and caring,” she said, although she admitted that the school’s administrative assistants who fielded the calls weren’t as thrilled.

Cressey said school officials contacted their ring vendor Thursday morning and confirmed that the ring wasn’t their model. And, she said, rings are only ordered in the high school’s colors, although a graduate could likely get that changed by a jeweler.

Raymond got on Reddit to set the record straight and try to end the calls and messages.

“My name is Josh, I graduated from Kennebunk in 2007, and while I’m not super pleased at having to give out this info online, it’s not mine,” he wrote. “My phone has been blowing up since last night, people have been flooding my mom, sister, wife and friends about it over Facebook. I have not been in the military or to Afghanistan. And people have been posting personal information of mine in the posts people have been making.”

Raymond said that some of the posts mentioned where he lived and worked, along with his mother’s address. He declined to say Thursday what town he lives in, preferring to be identified as a resident of southern Maine. He did confirm that he works in the kitchen at the Landing Store in Kennebunk.

But, with the post taking on a life of its own, Raymond’s phone didn’t cool down.

“People weren’t just listening to anything, they were really grabbing on to the whole ‘This is a Kennebunk class ring and we’ve got to find the guy,’ ” he said.

By about midday Thursday, the rightful owner had been found. Joshua Wadley, who graduated in 2007 from Kashmere High School in Houston, served in the military and was deployed to Afghanistan in 2009-10, said it was his. The school’s nickname is the Fighting Rams.

In an exchange with another Facebook user Thursday afternoon, Wadley said, “It’s mine. I haven’t seen that thing in so long. I must have lost it when deployed in 09/10 when I was in the army.”

That finally seemed to help, Raymond said, and his life began to calm down late Thursday afternoon.

“At the height, it was really freaking me out,” he said.

Raymond said he was glad the ring’s rightful owner had been found and he had just one message for those who are following the saga: “Please tell them to leave me alone.”

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