This past Friday I took my daughter Tesla to the Galleria Mall in York.  We ate at the food court–at the time I didn’t even think about the recent roach infestation–she had McDonald’s chicken nugget happy meal and I opted for a over-priced, fancy salad from the Salad Works restaurant.  Things were going down well though Tesla felt her chicken nuggets were a bit over-cooked.  I convinced her, after tasting a bite, that they were they same old nuggets she always orders.  She finished before me and began playing with her happy meal toy.  One of those worthless plastic toys that become junk thirty minutes or less after opening the package.  Tesla and I went up and down the escalators a few times…because she thinks it is fun and to be honest with you, I’m still fascinated and horrified every time I set my foot down on a moving step with teeth.

On the first floor we walked over to the Piercing Pagoda, a little kiosk shop that sells silver and gold jewelry.  Tesla’s seventh birthday is coming up quickly and I asked her if she would like to pick out a pair of earrings.  I showed her the case of sterling silver ones that I wanted her to pick from; it held everything imaginable in the form of an earring.  They were on sale: Buy one get the second half price!  I couldn’t ignore the signs announcing the sale and told Tesla to pick two pair.  She chose circular rainbows made with rhinestones and butterflies with blue and green rhinestone wings.  They were ones I may have even chosen back when I was almost seven.  I would have held on to them for a year since I wasn’t allowed to have my ears pierced until I was eight.

Tesla asked to go to any cellphone store so she could play some games on the Ipads on display.  We have done this in the past and after the sales person gets your just wanna have fun, they move on.  It was the same on that day and I watched Tesla slide a blue bird around on the screen for a little bit.  I gave the game a try and then moved to another Ipad and tried out the enormous camera.  About ten minutes had passed and I told Tesla we had to get going to Boscov’s store.  My nephew Blaine’s birthday party was the next day and we still needed to pick out his gift.  As we headed to Boscov’s we took a short detour to a candy kiosk.  I dug a quarter out of my wallet, juggling two drink cups, a McDonald’s bag of leftovers and Tesla’s bag with her new earrings.  Tesla chose the gumball machine and hoped for blue.  As the quarter turned, it fell into the money mechanism forcing the machine to drop a gumball.  It was blue!  Ah, the day was just sweetness after sweetness.

We agreed on purchasing a Nerf Gun for Blaine.  They seemed a bit over-priced but we were at Boscov’s, not Walmart.  On the way to the sale desk I spotted printed t-shirts on sale for $4.99.  We stopped and looked through the sales table for SpongeBob SquarePants or Angry Birds t-shirts and sure enough, we found one of each.  In just a few more steps, we were at the sales desk.  The clerk rang up my sale and I reached for my wallet and came up with just my cellphone and car keys.  I looked in the earring bag thinking I may have thrown it in there.  My wallet wasn’t much bigger than a man’s wallet but it was wider, holding all my important cards.  Nope, not in the bag.  I looked in the McDonald’s bag knowing I wouldn’t have put it in there but desperation makes you do funny things.  I apologized and said I must have set my wallet down looking at the toys.  Tesla told the clerk, “we will be back after my mom finds her wallet.  This is my cousin Blaine’s birthday present and his party is tomorrow.”

Suddenly things weren’t so sweet.  In fact, that punch in the gut feeling just made my vinaigrette salad dressing turn sour.  We returned to the jewelry store but I knew I hadn’t let my wallet there.  I couldn’t put my finger on why at the time but I remember now, giving Tesla the quarter for the blue gumball she spit out less than fifteen minutes later.  I reported my wallet lost/stolen to mall security.  About forty minutes had passed since I lost track of my wallet and no one had turned it in to security.  I filed a written report but had little hope left of every seeing my wallet again.  Tesla and I walked around a little longer, me looking into the trash cans, thinking someone might have found that my wallet had less than $1 in cash so they tossed it away.  No luck in the trash so I called Dale to look up the phone number to cancel my only Visa debit card.

I’ve come to the conclusion that someone found my wallet on top of the candy kiosk and took it.  I’m glad there was no money in my wallet which means they got nothing but half a pack of postage stamps and maybe eighty-six cents in change.  Serves that jackass or jackasses right!  It makes no sense why someone would keep a wallet that clearly is important to me, while worthless to them.  My credit card shows no unusual activity so I know it wasn’t used.  What it boils down to is, a good person didn’t find my wallet.  I lost my wallet one other time along the road.  It came out of my cycle’s saddlebag and I didn’t realize it until I arrived home.  Three days later, the police called notifying me my wallet had been found by a couple living along that road.  They had been out walking their dogs.  I never caught found out who they were because the police couldn’t give me their names…what I did know is these people were my “neighbors” in the way country people refer to neighbors.  They lived closed by, but I probably didn’t know who they were and since the address on my license hadn’t been update to reflect my move back to my parents, it took three days for the police to find me.  Now that is what good people do.  They turn over a found wallet (the fifteen dollars was still inside) to the police and the police search to find you and return it.

Now I am in the process of having new cards issued for banking, insurance and I have to make the trip to the Department of Transportation to have yet another rendition of my license reproduced.  The wait at the DOT office seems endless and I dread going in for my new card.  So much time wasted in searching for my wallet and now trying to recreate what was stolen.  I had faith that someone would find and return my wallet, but five days have now passed and there was clearly no good person who came to my rescue.

~P.