It became a devastating event when I couldn’t find my wallet again nine days after I had misplaced it.
Losing track of it once was annoying enough. When I thought I had repeated the behavior, it was frankly debilitating.
I began to doubt my cognitive abilities. So I could do almost nothing. I couldn’t read the newspaper, write a blog post, or focus on much of anything.
The only thing I had the energy to do was to watch some recorded TV programs. (I was away in Las Vegas for one week. How have I been THREE weeks behind on JEOPARDY, 60 Minutes, and CBS Sunday Morning?)
The good news is that I didn’t misplace my wallet. The not-so-good news is that I had lost it outright. I last had it on a Wednesday, but it wasn’t until Saturday that someone tried to use my credit cards. Since I had frozen my DISCOVER card, which is extraordinarily easy, they emailed me very early Sunday morning, declining a $6 purchase at a Sunoco station.
The guy who found, or stole, my wallet also tried to use my Visa card for $122 and $222 purchases at Speedway, a gas station that took over the Hess stations operations around here. The theory is that he wanted to buy either gift cards or lottery tickets. But the purchases were declined. (So there, schmuck.)
Sunday afternoon, I filed a police report. I woke up that morning thinking that if this @$$4013 wanted to frame me, he could leave behind my ID at a crime scene. In addition to credit cards, ID, and $80 in cash, I also lost some gift cards, including one from the Spectrum movie theater, alas!
Repairing the damage
Monday morning, my wife dropped me off at the CDTA so that I could get ANOTHER bus pass. I know the fool used my Navigator card on the #905 (Central Avenue) bus and twice on the #18 (Delaware Avenue). Then I went to the DMV, the first time I’d been to the Central Avenue location; it was not onerous.
I went to the bank to get cash. This was only the second time this year I – ready for it? – WROTE A CHECK. It’s a good thing I had my passport because it was an acceptable form of ID.
Oddly, when I spoke to the teller, and they wanted to verify my phone numbers, one was my current phone. The other I didn’t recognize. It wasn’t a work number. I Googled it and discovered it was my phone number for a previous Albany address… in 1983. My bank has changed hands twice since then. How bizarre.
It continues to be a PITA. Some automatically paid items were not paid, so I had to contact the vendors with my new credit card info, which I could not do until some of the cards arrived yesterday.
Notwithstanding, let me reiterate this. Dealing with the lost wallet was a LOT easier than not knowing where I might have put it again. Once it was established that it was indeed gone, I knew what to do. BTW, the wallet pictured belonged to Ernest Hemingway. It is shown on the JFK Presidential Library and Museum page.