Saturday, October 08, 2005

Yesterday I lost my wallet. Well not really lost, but...Well, all will be explained shortly. It was 8:00 and I had just left the government building where I work on Main and crossed the street to catch my bus. Upon, arriving at the bus stop, I realized that I had left my wallet in the building. I went back and swiped my card by the thingie to let me in and it flashed green and then red and beeped angrily, as though to say, "You don't have clearance, bitch." So I had to call my supervisor who had to come back to the building and let me in and then I discovered that after all of that, twas not there. I retraced, I went back to the school, nothing. After that I pretty much freaked out for a bit, rocked in the fetal position, and recomposed, accepting that it was, like Britney's virtue, long gone.

Let me take a moment to explain why the loss of this wallet was so great. A wallet is a wallet is a wallet, even if it is an imported Louis Vuitton wallet. Whatever. It is, after all, only a material item. However, this was a gift from a close friend and adolescent mentor when I turned 18 and was something of a symbol of our evolution from a mentor-student relationship to genuine friendship. Besides that, it essentially contained my life; all my IDs, bus pass, debit card, address book, etc.

So today I'm at school, a bit down about this, but coping with my loss much as Jonny did his black beater. Then one of my friends with whom I'm walking states, "Well, a bunch of us were looking at it yesterday." (I had left my bag with them for a short while.) Really. You guys were passing around my wallet and now it's gone. That's just...so fantastic. Then I start talking to various people who tell me that So-and-so has it and then they give it to Other-generic-but-undisclosed-name and it eventually wound up with one of my friends and it was largely believed that they still had it. So, I'm listening to this, and internalizing this and I'm just getting more and more ANGRY that not one of the three people who had had it in their possession after I had blindly left for the day had bothered to tell me anything about it until I was bemoaning it some 24 hours lately.

I got it back, so fine, whatever, but I was noticeably a little bit upset that no one had even called me the night before. Like, that just..makes sense! So, I'm awful at hiding my emotions so it was clear that I was a bit pissy, and while there was a certain amount of apologizing, I couldn't help but feeling that somehow I was the asshole for getting upset over this. I know grand scheme, a misplaced wallet is not a huge thing; rest assured I do understand this. But I felt like I was being judged as unjustified in being a bit miffed over the whole thing. And it all boils down to this pansy-ass North American politically correct bullshit where you can't express any negative feelings without somehow being labeled touchy. And this was really not a friendship-breaking moment with my friend and I, but I've been in these situations before and everyone else around gets really tense cause, Oh God! someone isn't happy and we're awkward and how do we handle this... It's like most people have two extremes: happy/normal and upset/abnormal and nary the two shall meet. It wasn't a small deal to me and it wasn't a huge deal either. It was simply a deal. Let us be free to have and accept deals.

Like drug deals. Those rock.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Here, here. I too vote in favour of having and accepting deals. Sometimes things happen and people are going to react. If you've been involved in the happening, deal with the reaction. However, you shouldn't have to have had a deal about something like this. I mean, honestly - your wallet? I'd be right upset as well. Particularly when I didn't give out the wallet; it was taken. It's not as though you lent your pencil sharpener and the borrower forgot to return it. Yike. Some peoples' children...

Life is exceptionally rough among the mortals for us flawless few, isn't it?