Yesterday was one of those days. You know the ones. A stub your toe, spill coffee on your shirt, drop your wallet kind of day.
Let's focus on the drop my wallet part. It happened in front of the Elkhorn Double Quik. By the time I realized my mistake and returned, it was gone. The store employees said they'd seen a guy pick up a wallet next to where my car was.
It was probably scary to see the colors I felt running over my face. For a couple of seconds, all I heard was a loud siren going off in my ears. The clerks were saying something to me, but I wasn't hearing it.
I knew there wasn't much cash there, five or ten bucks. I discovered my error when I stopped to get more cash at the money machine. But there were several debit and credit cards in there that needed to be cancelled right now. Or sooner.
There was a driver's license to be replaced. And insurance cards. Food City and AARP cards. Man what a pain to run new copies of all those things down. Jeez I've got to buy a new wallet.
Those thoughts and the siren drowned out whatever the Double Kwik assistant manager was saying to me. I nodded my head, said thanks and wandered out to start the cancelling.
A funny thing happened in the midst of this first world personal crisis stuff, though. If you want to find out just how good the people around you are, do something stupid. It's amazing how far folks will go to help you.
Two quick bank stops in town took care of the debit cards and I even managed to walk away with a temporary replacement for one. The credit cards were easily killed at home online. Then I ran back to the scene of the drop.
The folks at the store were so nice, so helpful, and so frustrated that it happened I started to feel bad for putting them through the whole thing. But you know, this is 2016 and video cameras are everywhere. They had it all waiting for me in case I wanted to contact the police.
But at this point I wondered if it would be worth it. The cards were cancelled, only a few dollars lost. I'm the idiot who dropped his wallet in the parking lot of the only gas station in town.
I thanked my neighbors for their help and went home to regroup before heading over Whitesburg way. I packed up the computer and started out of the house.
Someone was walking up the steps to my door. The man was holding a wallet.
"Did you lose something?" He handed it to me. "I picked it up thinking I dropped my wallet. Looks just like mine. Realized something wasn't right driving down the road with wallets in both pockets."
Yes, it was all there. Just like I dropped it.
So maybe it wasn't one of those days. Maybe it was a good day with good people and lessons learned. And just a little inconvenience.