I once was lost

... but now am found.  Not once, but twice!  Twice lost.  Twice found.

I refer, of course, to my wallet. 

On Thursday, while running my four-mile loop -- part of it through the UW campus -- my wallet somehow took leave of me.  I didn't discover its disappearance until I walked in the front door.  Although, until that moment, I thought I'd exhausted every ounce of energy, I immediately began retracing my steps on foot.  Walking, of course, not running. 

About half way through this patently hopeless task, a guy called telling me he had found my wallet.  He wanted to get it back to me.  He didn't live around here -- in fact, he was visiting from Boston.  He suggested we meet in front of a Wells Fargo bank near the University at 6 p.m.  I agreed.  After some concerns -- which I mulled over publicly on Facebook -- that a scoundrel was setting me up to drain my Wells Fargo account, I met him as planned.  He cheerfully handed me the wallet, and resolutely refused to accept my offer of a "finder's fee."

Well, I certainly had learned my lesson, right?  Apparently not.  This morning, I discovered -- again on campus -- that my wallet had again taken flight.  Déjà vu all over again!  I retraced all my steps -- magical thinking -- including a mile walk back to the café where I'd had breakfast.  Nada.  As a last resort, I tried the library lost and found.  My wallet! There it was!  I suspect it slipped out of my pocket while I was using the rest room facilities.

So what's the deal?  Is my rear end changing its configuration, allowing my wallet to make a break for it more easily?  I really have no idea.  I have to take some action to keep this from happening again -- tie the damn thing around my neck?

(I'm not even talking about how I lost my wallet last October in Laos -- while bouncing along, my back to the open air, in a tuk-tuk.  Never heard from that wallet again -- it's probably now a prize icon of the Mysterious West, displayed in some rice farmer's front room.  You'd be surprised at how many items you carry in your wallet that need to be canceled and replaced.  I certainly was.)

I want to publicly thank Oleg of Boston, Massachusetts, the lost and found department at the UW's Allen Library, and the unknown student who turned in my wallet this morning.  You've saved me a vast amount of difficulty over the past week.

When I was a kid, my mom told me -- on many, many occasions -- "Honey, you'd leave your head somewhere if it wasn't attached to your neck."  But we both felt that losing stuff was something I would grow out of.  Sorry, Mother -- it just didn't work out that way. 

As Wordsworth noted, the child is father of the man. But I think he meant it as an expression of optimism.