So,
I reached dizzying, new heights of general incapability at life whilst visiting
Manchester this weekend when, in an impressive feat of personal ineptitude, I
beat my personal fail record and somehow managed to lose my wallet, despite it being carefully tucked inside
my bag. That’s right: from inside my bag.
You
think I’d have learnt my lesson by now, since this is actually the second experience I’ve had of losing a
wallet. A year or two back, I accidentally left one, given to me by my dad, in
the back of a taxi when it didn’t slip into my pocket properly after I'd payed the
fare. I didn’t even realise it was gone until the next morning, and by then it
was too late. The taxi rank tracked down the driver, but the wallet was nowhere
to be found and was never handed in.
I
was devastated. My dad had owned the thing for years and passed it on to me,
and I’d gone and lost it after only 12 months.
I was also completely disgusted at the fact that whoever had found it
would choose to keep something so intimate and vital to another person rather
than hand it in. There’d only been about a fiver inside too; there was next to
no monetary gain in it for them whatsoever. Despite all that, the person in
question had at no point imagined how it would feel if it were their wallet
that had been lost; nor had they apparently been troubled by even the slightest
speck of guilt for keeping it.
Unbelievably
though, the worst was yet to come. Months passed, then one day I received a
phone call out of the blue. It was a policeman from a town nearly an hour’s
drive away. “Hello, is that Matthew? I’m calling to inform you that the bedroom
of a local teenage boy was raided by our force recently, and your provisional
license has been discovered in it.”
My blood ran totally cold. I felt almost
violated knowing some unpleasant, little creature had found my wallet in the
taxi and rifled through the contents to see what could be of use or potentially
sold on. When questioned later, the boy apparently knew nothing about the wallet;
it was probably just tossed in the bin after it had been emptied. I dread to
think how he came to get his horrible hands on my ID though, not to mention for
what exactly he’d been using it.
The
whole experience just made my skin crawl and I was totally disillusioned by the
complete apathy of which people seem capable. I read a line from a work by the
Spanish philosopher, Baltasar Graciàn, not long ago and really stuck with me:
‘the misfortune of your century, that virtue is taken as unusual and malice the
norm.’ And he was saying that all the way back in the 1600s… I wonder what he’d
have to say, if he were alive to see the way people act today?
Okay,
I’ve communicated how sufficiently jaded and embittered I already am by this
point, so let’s jump back to Manchester Piccadilly last weekend. I’m stood
rummaging inside my tote bag. I can’t seem to feel my wallet. I carry on
fumbling inside, nerves starting to creep in. Still can’t feel it. Imagine my
growing horror as I slowly realise with each passing second that it is definitely
no longer there at all.
I
can’t actually believe I’ve done it again. Cue me rushing like a madman to
trace my steps, vainly leaving my contact details with every info desk and
waitress I can find, before accepting the inevitable and enduring the stress of
trying to cancel every bank card I’d had on me. It dawns on me there were a
couple of gift cards tucked inside too. Great. I’m never seeing that wallet again!
So,
a few days go by, and all the while I’m mentally kicking myself for being so
extraordinarily scatter-brained. No one has been in touch, and I’m torturing
myself wondering whose hands it could have fallen into this time.
Suddenly
my phone rings. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I suspect it’s the police
calling to tell me my ID’s been found being used to cut lines of coke in the
den of some highflying drug baron or other.
Thankfully, it turns out to be just my boyfriend.
Thoughtfully of him, he’s
passed by the train station’s lost property one last time on his way home from
work, just in case. And I don’t believe it – my wallet has been handed in. Everything – gift cards, cash, ID, bank cards – is still safely inside. I’d
come to the conclusion that mankind as a whole was just a total
write-off; yet, some kind soul had apparently spotted my wallet on the train or
platform and done the decent thing. I was ecstatic!
I’d
presumed the worst of others, only to be reminded that there are still some
good eggs left out there, few and far between as they undoubtedly sometimes
are. I couldn’t be more grateful to that refreshingly caring stranger who made my
day, and I wish I could thank them, whoever and wherever they are. I wouldn’t
say my faith in humanity has been entirely restored, but the next time I lose
something (which, me being me, will no doubt be sooner rather than later), I won’t
be quite so quick to give up hope on it coming back to me again!
