My Lucky Stars
posted at 4:17 pm
on Feb. 11, 2017
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Spinning Wheel Got to Go Round
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Goodbye, Aimee
You’ll never believe the odd mystery and series of coincidences that happened to me today.
I was out for a walk in L.A. with my dog Mack. I passed a young couple pushing a stroller. They said hello to me because Mack is so darn cute, and I nodded at them and went on my way.
About 20 minutes later, I passed them again as I was returning to Lonnie’s house.
This time, they slowed down and stared at me oddly and then asked, “Are you from somewhere other than L.A.?”
I thought that was an extremely odd question. But I said, “Yes, I’m visiting. Why?”
They said, “We think we found your wallet back up the street.”
And they had!
Holy crap!
But… there’s more.
* * *
They had spotted my (dark brown) wallet in the gutter / bushes. Looking through it, they’d seen my IDs and they recognized it belonged to the person they had seen walk by them just before they found it.
Because of this, instead of taking the wallet with them, they had simply put it in the nearest house’s mailbox, assuming that I must have dropped it as I left for my walk. However, I actually live many blocks away from where they left it, so if they hadn’t run into me a second time, I might never have gotten my wallet back and certainly not for days or weeks, because that home owner wouldn’t have been able to get in touch with me.
But you wait, it gets even weirder.
* * *
You see, I didn’t actually take my wallet on the walk. In fact, my wallet had been missing for about a day. The last time I’m sure I had it was when I bought groceries on Thursday night. I’d been looking for it around the house since then, not in a panic, but I was definitely worried and stumped.
The wallet was soaking wet through, which means it had to have been sitting out in the rain. And it rained last night, but not at all today. So that means my wallet went missing before the morning it was found.
So maybe it fell out of my pocket on Thursday night when I was bringing things in from the car? However, it was found was several blocks from where I parked.
But that’s not all…
* * *
All of the cash in the wallet was taken, including the emergency cash I had truly hidden away in it.
But thankfully, everything else was still there—credit cards, Nexus card, ATM cards, driver’s license, emergency condom, the best fortune cookie fortunes, old love notes, yoga pass, Costco card, bus passes for L.A. and Vancouver, medical marijuana card, medical insurance cards, airmiles card —every single item except two:
* a British two-pence piece I’ve carried for good luck for over 30 years
* a Tile!
What’ a Tile? It’s a bluetooth device with a battery that allows it to connect to a smartphone so it can tell you where your Tile is. It’s for finding things like keys and wallets and other things you misplace.
So whoever had my wallet went through the trouble of removing the Tile specifically (and I can’t locate where it is now so I think it’s destroyed). Which means they knew what a Tile was, because the Tile itself doesn’t have anything on it that explains what it does. It’s just a flat thin white square about the size of a trimmed business card.
* * *
So basically, I’m left wondering:
* When did my wallet go missing? Thursday night? Some time on Friday?
* From where? From my car? Maybe I left it unlocked—I’ve done this before, and I could have left the wallet in it.
* Or from the street from where I may have dropped it? Or from my house?
There’s not really a non-creepy answer, especially because whoever found it took all the money from it and removed the Tile and threw it in the gutter instead of dropping it in a mailbox or otherwise trying to get it back to me. Which is exactly what the person did who stole my wallet when I was in high school—took the cash and tossed the rest in a ditch.
And yet despite all that, I ended up getting it back less than a day later, because I happened to pass the same couple twice, before and then after they walked by the place it was discarded.
So you tell me: was I born with a horseshoe on my back or what?
