If I Ran the Zoo

I lost my wallet. I had no idea where, it just wasn’t in my pocket or on the top of the dresser where I leave it at night.

Big hassle. Canceling and replacing credit cards and ID cards and my driver’s license.

Oh, let’s not forget the $400 plus I had in cash in that wallet.

For starters, I got a new wallet and I carried my passport in it so I had one form of ID. I got new credit cards and spent time at the DMV waiting in line to apply for a new driver’s license.

Got it all done. Big sigh of relief and then, a month later, I lost my new wallet! And my passport! A few hundred more dollars wasted. Oy vey!

It took me a week or so to get over my frustration and self-incrimination. And while sitting in front of the television, my puppy Rosie drags the original wallet out from underneath the sofa and it’s chewed up with cards beyond recognition. Needless to say, I must have left my wallet on the coffee table where Rosie could easily reach it.

Soon after, I sold my house at Lake Tyee and there was a really nice piece of art that the woman who had sold me the house left on the wall just above a book case. When I resold it, I decided one good deed deserves another so I left the same small painting on the wall, totally forgetting that I had hid my new wallet there so neither my dog nor any of my human visitors could get their hands on it.

Several days later I get a call from the realtor saying the woman who purchased my place found the wallet behind that painting. And passport. And a few hundred dollars in cash.

There’s a thing called a “dummy check” you should always do when you are moving from one house to another. But I forgot to make a mental note that I had stashed my wallet away and moved out of that house without doing a dummy check.

I profusely thanked the young woman who bought the house from me and I somehow managed to combine the two lost wallets into one.

There is an old saying that “no good deed goes unpunished” and originally that was the case for me. I left a nice painting on the wall for the new buyer to claim as her own and that caused me to lose my second wallet and passport.

But, this is a story with a happy ending because of the fact that the wallet ended up back in my pocket.

Both of them, And my passport. So a good deed can indeed go unpunished and even rewarded and the storyteller here has learned to be much more careful and much more conscious about where he puts important items!

Now I narrate whatever it is I’m doing if it’s something that is important. As I’m writing this column, my wallet is in my front left pocket and it will be high up on the bedroom dresser when I’m asleep, out of reach from my darling dog Rosie so she can’t rip it up and hide it under the sofa.