Losing My Identity

Two weeks ago I lost my wallet.

I'd checked everywhere, through six pairs of pants, through three closets, under my bed, in all my drawers and every room of the house. I retraced my steps and when it didn't net any results, I redoubled my efforts. Beyond humiliation, I asked friends whose houses I'd visited to check their bathrooms.

The first piece of advice friends and family gave me was to cancel my cards. I picked up the phone and actually dialed my bank. Three minutes  through the annoyance of the bank's voice-automated system, I let the angels of optimism and hope triumph over the angels of caution and financial prudence. I hung up, but I'm not stupid. For the next 15 days I monitored my bank balances on a twice daily basis. I drilled my wife on any item I did not immediately recognize as a regular expense. Day by day, I held off cancelling my cards and filing for a new driver's license. So which were the better angels? You'll have to take the jump with me to find out.

My wallet, my life

A wallet is such a necessity. It contains those plastic cards that mark you as a member in good standing of our plastic society. Credit cards, ATM cards--those laminated bits by which you transact on a daily basis.  Your drivers license marks you as a legal driver. Without it, I panicked each time I turned the car's ignition key. Twice I had to ask Mrs.W for money. We have a joint checking account as we have had through 30 years of marriage, but it felt humiliating nonetheless. I felt as if I'd regressed somehow, from responsible adulthood to some enfeebled, pre-adult state.

I'm not a neat freak. Nor am I a total slob. I'm about as cluttered as the typical guy.  I pick up my socks. I do not leave my underwear in the bathroom when I take a shower. My collection of cast iron skillets hang in pleasing symmetry on my kitchen utility rack. I even have a special drawer in an antique desk where I empty my pockets as soon as I enter the house. Mr. Wallet usually resides there, but I do slip up. I sometimes need it in my office for entering credit card numbers or transferring information from notes or business cards people give me. There are gaps in my system, not large ones, but gaps nonetheless.

Living and working in a small place has its rules and rhythms. Mr. Franklin's "a place for everything" is among the wisest of them. I preach this dictum to the regular chagrin of my family and do my best to live by it though I am not perfect. I do not cast the first stone from a standpoint of moral or functional superiority, but by necessity. Four people, one small house--all you have to do is breathe wrong to cause chaos. I cleaned, organized, sifted and tore my office apart twice--but no wallet.

Each day without it, I panicked a little bit more, realizing that as time went on my memory of what actually happened would fade and colored by "unreliable outliers"-- more wishful thinking and hope than photographic recollections of where I was and what I did. I realized I'd need to use other, less reliable methods.

If I were a wallet, where would I hide?

If I were a cat, what would I do with a wallet?

I'd have to depend on systematic organizing and cleaning. 

I told myself that while it was terrible to lose this piece of identity, it was only a thing and not so important in the grand scheme. I would benefit from my situation by motivating myself to engage in organizing projects I might not do otherwise. I'd have to depend on luck and serendipity.

These were such poor consolations.

Some parts of my life just seemed to stop. Others slowed to a crawl. This empty hole, though only a couple inches small, seemed to be sucking more and more of my life, like a kid sucks ice cream through a milkshake straw. I was plagued by larger thoughts of loss and regret. Some people might regard it as pathetic that I reduced my identity and sense of self worth to a small leather and plastic wedge that sits in my back pocket. Before you judge, take your own wallet out of your purse or trou's and put it someplace you won't have access to for two weeks and see if you don't feel otherwise.

On my daily walks, eyes to the ground, I was haunted by every black square object on the street.
The start of this week was the worst. Getting more and more depressed, I was torn between the necessary irritation of moving on by week's end, of rebuilding my "identity"one plastic bit at a time and the irrational assumption that as soon as I did, I'd find the wallet and would castigate myself for the colossal waste of time and effort. Talk about zero sum gain!  The hundred or so bucks in the money fold would be lost forever and business, though much improved, hasn't been so good that I could afford to kiss off a C-note. 

Back it up

Today, I picked a small card off the floor in my office. It was an old Blue Cross ID that I'd recently pulled out of my wallet to replace with its newer version. I placed it in the little business card holder I'd been using as my backup wallet. I figured that the old BC Card would be a good backup, in case in my distracted state, I was hit by truck and lay unconscious on the street. Again, I tried to think like a wallet. I was in a backup state of mind. On a desperate hunch I went to my backup briefcase. My memory told me I'd already looked there and in fact, I had a clear mental image of turning it upside down and shaking vigorously. Sure enough, after ten seconds, there it was, my wallet, in the open pouch, presumedly where I'd placed it. I have no recollection of putting it there. I don't know why I would have, but I obviously did.

With a whoop of joy and a big goofy smile plastered on my face, I stuck my old friend in my back pocket and I'm sitting on it now as I write this. I never do that, but it's twingey pressure, usually so annoying, feels sweet and comfortable. Things are back to reliable normalcy. I can move on to bigger and more pressing problems. I've learned my lesson; though damned if I know what that is.