Lost

Last Thursday I went out to play some volleyball, and at home later that night I discovered that my wallet was missing. So I thought back and tried to think about where it might have been lost. My first thought was that I must have set it down somewhere out of the ordinary when I got home. I searched high and low, even going so far to look in drawers I haven't opened in months and looking in the refrigerator to see if I had grabbed a drink and inadvertently set it down there. This did not provide any results. From there I thought it must have fallen out in my car. A thorough search ensued and again left me empty handed.

I had the wallet in the pocket of my sweat pants, which I had on over my shorts. I took those off and put them in my gym back while I played, and was fairly certain that I checked the pocket when I put them back on after the game to make sure it was still there. If it had not fallen out there, the only other possible losing place I could conceive of was in my friend's car who I had carpooled with, or in the parking lot at the park & ride where we met up. A text message to my friend turned up nothing, and a Friday morning call to the gym was also a dead end. So Friday I went back to the park & ride and took a look around and again, nothing.

And so I took the day off work Friday and got to spend the time instead doing wonderful things like waiting at the DMV for a couple hours, and calling banks and pushing buttons to get through the phone tree, only to be disconnected when it told me I was going to talk to a real person. After going through that a couple times, I finally got to have a few lovely conversations with gentlemen with thick Indian accents. Good times.

And so, Monday morning rolled around, and armed with nothing but a temporary id and a few bus fare tickets which I was lucky enough to have laying around, I headed off to work. Once there, I received another nice surprise - a replacement bus pass would set me back $50. That hit me like a kick in the crotch, but what choice did I have? At least that allowed me to get back and forth to work.

A brief ray of light shined on me Tuesday night when I got home from work to find a post card from Metro telling me that my wallet had been found at the park & ride and turned in to a bus driver, and that I could retrieve it from the lost & found downtown. I breathed a big sigh of relief and went down to the Metro office today (Wednesday) hoping to put an end to this ordeal. That's when I discovered that Metro is closed today. Why they are closed the day before Thanksgiving, I'll never know, but several curse words later I resigned myself to the fact that I'll now have to wait until Monday to be whole again. But at least I'm relieved that it's not still floating around God knows where and that, presumably, I don't have to worry about identity theft any longer. I assume someone honest enough to turn it in is honest enough to not steal my identity.

To me, one of the most interesting aspects of this ordeal is that a few months ago I'd read an article stating that scientists in Edinburgh recently did a study and found that people are significantly more likely to return a wallet if it contained a baby picture. Specifically, their research found that 88% of wallets with a baby picture were returned, compared to 53% for a picture of a puppy, 48% for a picture of a family, 28% for a picture of an elderly couple, 20% for no pictures but a charity card, and worst of all, 15% for none of the above. After reading this, I immediately contacted my cousin to get a picture of my adorable little niece to put in my wallet. And so I credit little Lillie for the imminent return of my lost wallet. I now owe her something, perhaps a tiny little Seahawks jersey.