"I wish everything would just freeze."
Joe looked around and realized that in his panic he had frozen the strange man, Mrs. Barnes and his mom.
"I'm so confused right now, I just wish I knew what was going on."
Joe was pretty lucky that such a general wish did not flood his mind with information from all over the world. The ring seemed to have some kind of safety, even if it did also seem to be a prankster sometimes.
As it happened, Joe's mind was filled with knowledge of the three people and their connections to each other.
The man was: