NYC: A Tale of Luck beyond Good Fortune
I am a relatively fastidious person. In terms of my own personal org skills, I know, for the most part, where things are. Like keys, my wallet, and so forth. The only thing I cannot seem to keep track of is lip balm. I loose a tube once every week or so, and I invariably find it weeks later in the pocket of a not-often-worn pair of pants.
Anyway, for some reason, my ability to keep track of one item I usually keep safely guarded in my pocket tends to break down when I am on vacation. My wallet just can't seem to stay where it is supposed to.
I have managed to misplace it a number of times on recent trips. New York proved to be the most trying.
T and I were riding a cab back to the B&B we stayed at on 58th St on the upper East side in Manhattan. I had taken out my wallet a few blocks before our stop to count out the fare and figure in a tip. I was holding the money in my hand. I handed the fare to the cabbie when we arrived and slid across the seat to get out of the cab on the curbside of the street. We hustled into our building to get out of the drizzle.
Back in our room, I proceeded to take off my coat and empty my pockets when I suddenly realized I did not have my wallet. A short panic later I was running through my head what I did with it. I knew I had with me. I paid for dinner. I knew I had it in my hand in the cab, because I paid the cabbie in cash. Did I not put my wallet back in jacket pocket? No, I must have had it on my lap. Oh my God! I left it in the cab! So, T is adamantly telling me to run after the cab. Except that I saw it drive off. My wallet was gone and some lucky cabbie in a turban was going to be eating a good meal the next morning.
About two minutes had passed since we entered our room. I hustled back down to the street knowing my chances of finding the cab still there were zero, but hoping, maybe, somehow, I had dropped my wallet outside the cab. I didn't see it on the sidewalk. I walked down to the place where I thought we had exited the cab and walked into the street. I looked up and down the bustling street. I saw lots and lots of lights, but no wallet. I started shuffling back to the room. Dejected, I was pondering how I was going to notify my creditors without phone numbers and pay for meals for the next two days without money. I decided to check the street one more time.
I turned to walk back into the street between two parked cars. Cabs and cars and trucks were zipping past, horns honking, and there was a group of guys standing directly across the street. I looked down the street in the direction from which we had come. I about shit my pants. Lying three feet from the parked car to my left in the middle of the street was a shape I recognized. My wallet (money clip style) was lying propped up on it's side with all it's money exposed on a busy NYC street. Not only had no one seen it, but it had not been crushed by passing vehicles. Miraculous. I snapped it up post haste.
T was emerging from the door as I was heading back up to the room... enormously relieved.
As traumatic as this was, it was made worse by the fact I had done nearly the same thing the night before. Only I had remembered my wallet before exiting the cab.
Lucky is an understatement.
