Vanishing Point

 My wife imported a saying she attributes to her grandmother: "The house doesn't eat anything." We are not particularly sure if this is an accurate translation from the native German, but this phrase has served us well since the late twentieth century. 

Which is why the loss of my wallet was so infuriating. Not the initial loss of the wallet my wife brought me all the way from Italy. That one was "lost" a great many times, but turned out to be simply "misplaced." I set about preparing to replace credit cards and drivers license only to discover that this treasured bit of memory was lodged in the back of my closet, or stuck in the seat of my office chair. This was always a great relief because I don't carry a lot of money in my wallet, but I do carry the memory I spoke of earlier. There were parts of my history, ranging from photographs of my father to the receipt for my wife. The tiny slip of paper that showed that I had paid for our marriage license. Those, along with several other scraps of ephemera were under safekeeping as long as I could reach around to my back pocket to be sure that they were still there. 

On Sunday morning, it became apparent that the easy answers were no longer available. The night before, I had gone out to the ballpark with my family for one last look at the home team. When I awoke and started to put my day back together after a weekend of bouncing around, having fun, I realized I could not account for my wallet. I searched all the usual places. I looked in some unusual places. I called my son to see if it had made its escape into the back seat of his car. It quickly became apparent that the culprit was me. Or rather, my shorts. On any number of occasions my wallet has slipped from the back pocket of this particular pair of comfy cargo shorts. Please don't ask why, with all the pockets available I insisted on placing that most valuable fistful of leather in my back pocket instead of any of the Velcro-enhanced enclosures offered up to me by my odd sense of fashion. The best answer I can muster is "habit." 

So after a day of retracing and searching and researching, all of those prior preparations to replace missing items went into full effect. I canceled credit cards. I ordered a new drivers license. And the most difficult phase, I began to imagine a world without all those bits of paper that I had held onto for so long. 

The next evening, my wife went out to speak to a neighbor who, upon hearing about my plight, offered up her fifteen year old son's old wallet. Once again my wife came through in an odd pinch. The following day when my new credit card appeared via express delivery, I went to stuff it into this new tiny bit of luggage, but it was nowhere to be found. 

It was as if the gods were telling me that I was not ready to take on the responsibility of having a wallet again. Sorry, they said, but you're not grown up enough for this level of authority. Once again, I tore through the house, with the words of my wife's grandmother ringing in my head. Two hours of flipping over couch cushions and looking under furniture after the horizontal surfaces that made sense were exhausted revealed nothing. Had the gods vaporized this replacement gift to humiliate me further?

As I was brushing my teeth, getting ready to surrender to the circumstances, I decided there was one last place that had not been investigated. I asked my wife to help me toss our bed to see if the escaped wallet might have somehow ended up tangled in our sheets. 

The house didn't eat anything. It was right there where, I can only assume, the cat put it to wreak some sort of revenge on me for not giving him the attention he feels he deserves. 

A new age began the following morning. This slightly used wallet that now holds a replaced credit card and little else is the beginning of a new era, one that involves secure fastening of my back pocket.