This morning I decided to give my handbag the onceover. From time to time I take everything out, examine it, and throw away the accumulated trash bits. This time when I did so I discovered my money-purse was missing.
Alarm bells. At least it wasn't the credit card wallet, which is where the really big payoff resides, but instead the little European purse my husband used to use for change for the tolls on the big Autobans. I have since relegated it to carry my cash, with a little zipper compartment for change.
I thought back. I probably had about nine one-dollar bills and maybe a $20 in the folding money section. There is no ID card in it.
I looked about the apartment but could think of nowhere it might have been mislaid. It lives in whatever big handbag I am carrying at the moment. Sometimes I shove it into a pocket; it wasn't in the pocket of the jacket I wore yesterday. There were only two possibilities: I had left it at the A & P while I stuffed my grocery bag, or had put it somewhere, like the too-small pocket of my jacket, that might have allowed it to fall out onto the sidewalk on my way home. I hoped for the former. If it had dropped onto the sidewalk or the street, I would be out 30 bucks at least.
It's the kind of day I had hoped to avoid by staying in, but this was an emergency that required a trip to the A & P. (Better not to stay in anyway, even though it's drizzly and chilly.) I would drop off my two Netflix choices at the mailbox.
All the way to the store I had high hopes. I recalled vividly the time I had left my wallet and some mail at the post office on Washington Street when I still lived on Hudson. The angel who worked at that P.O. actually got a mailman to deliver it all--which she had packaged up in an envelope--to my door. I wrote a blog post about that experience.
But there was always the possibility that I hadn't left it at the A & P at all, but had lost it on the street.
When I got to the store I went directly to the lane where I had bought the groceries yesterday and was directed to Customer Service. I described the scruffy, well-worn little purse and even told them there was about $30 in it.
There it was. My heart sang with the joy of Hoboken Niceness once again as I walked home in the cold, misty drizzle. And actually there was over $40 in the purse. Next time I take it out it will have an ID card in it.
4 comments:
This is a test. Do not panic. Do not hide under your desk. I just want to see if the "comment" button works. If it does then the real "comment" will follow.
Hey, it worked.
One time (long ago), Judi worked in California and I still worked out of New Jersey, I had just finished a hard day working at a trade show in New Orleans. I flew in town earlier that same day and still had about $600 cash in my wallet. At the end of the show that day I called Judi at a pay phone in the lobby of the NO Convention Center to tell her that I had arrived safely but was exhausted. I took out my "phone card" and placed the call. After a long talk on the phone, I dragged myself to the hotel to relax. It was then that I realized that my wallet was missing. With cool, calculated reasoning (combined with dumb luck) I figured out that maybe, just maybe, I had left it at the pay phone when I used my "phone card". So what are the chances that a night employee might find a sudden need for 600-bucks? Or maybe no one saw the wallet and it was still there.Next morning I went first to the phone; nothing there. Then to the Security Office. After some clever questioning about whether I could describe the money, and who I was (not my IQ) they opened the desk drawer and handed me my wallet. Intact, of course, nothing missing.
Don't ya love when stuff like that happens?
Glad you figured out how to comment too.
Events like these do restore ones faith in fellow man. Why not have a 50/50 policy on the news at night... or in the papers?
Post a Comment