The ring just works passively. If you're wearing it, the bully won't mess with you. The RF protects you from 3 game overs and it'll tell you when a use has been consumed. Which locations are you stuck at?
Gotcha, thanks. Not stuck, but I think at the time it was unclear to me that the shops were prank-able. I was getting dialog with the shopkeepers but wasn’t aware of the small hit area I needed to click on to get the 'right' dialog with them (as a customer apparently instead of just person-to-person). that’s what had me stuck.