Sometime in 2007 I lost my billfold. This was not the first time that this has happen to me. I’m a seasoned billfold-losing veteran. However, usually I find it in a week or two.
That did not happen this time. I kept expecting it to show up any day, but it didn’t. I slowly began assembling a temporary replacement. My old billfold, my old driver’s license, a spare credit card I didn’t usually use, etc. I kept checking my credit cards online–no one had started using them–so I felt confident that it was somewhere in the house. Slowly, as the time I was separated from my billfold grew, I became less attached to it. I felt my commitment to it slipping. I got a new billfold as a present. I continued my recovery by replacing my ATM, my credit cards, my library cards (HPL & UAH) and finally, the most expensive replacement, my driver’s license. At long last, the long painful separation was complete and I could now get on with my life.
Then on Monday night, 3 days before Christmas, a received a mysterious call from Wal-Mart on University Drive. Did I have my billfold? I checked–yest I did. Well, they had found it. It was my old billfold–the one I had not waited for, the one I had jilted and rejected. I felt a brief–very brief–pang of pity for it. The caller didn’t know where it was found. They were astounded when I told them I had lost it over a year ago.
I don’t remember the date I lost my billfold, but I remember that I discovered it was missing when taking Kristen to the church building for some event on a Saturday morning. Since I do my marketing every Friday night at Wal-Mart (I sure know how to live), it makes sense that I lost it there. However, I still can’t understand how it was lost for so long. (BTW, “marketing” is to “grocery shopping” what “table tennis” is to “ping pong”.)
I picked it up the next day (Christmas Eve Eve) on the way to work. Disturbingly, they didn’t check that I was the owner of the billfold. (They could have just opened it and looked at the photograph on my driver’s license.) Surprisingly, it was chock full of stuff. I had forgotten just how thick my billfold used to be. There was not any money in it, but I may not have had any in it when I lost it.
Among the useful things I found were:
- $15 in Taco Bell gift certificates. See My Taco Sauce Wisdom blog article for a thrilling explanation of why I once had hundreds of dollars worth of these.
- $32.26 credit at the Booklegger–and not just general credit. It was the more valuable “Sci-Fi” credit. (More valuable because it can be used for Sci-Fi or General.)
- A fully punched “punch card” for a free soft drink or Icee at Kangaroo.
- A card for a free Chick-fil-a sandwich.
- Notes on a communion talk I was writing.
Among the useless things I found were:
- A card good for a free chips & dip at Q’doba. (For the uniformed, they went out of business while my billfold was lost.)
- A “punch card” for Bellicino’s good for a free sub that only needed one more punch. (Again, same song, second verse. And yes, I do seem to have a bunch of them don’t I?)
- A coupon for buy-one-get-one-free-lunch that expired in June 2007. And it didn’t have the restaurant’s name on it anyway.
- A McDonalds “Arch Card” with zero balance.
- An unpunched and expired “punch card” for Cost Cutters. (BTW, note to Danny Holmes: I can’t think about Cost Cutters punch cards without thinking about your story. If you know Danny, have him tell it to you.)
- Lots of canceled credit cards.
So, it was my early Chirstmas present to myself. And even though it cost me a lot more than it was worth (puase here tothink about that briefly if you need to), it is, afterall, the thought that counts.
