Saturday Writing Essentials 9/26/09: The Wallet

Thursday, I still had a few hours before sundown after work, so I thought I would do a couple of laps around the lake. I suited up, filled my water bottle, strapped on my helmet and headed off. Due to the rush hour traffic and the fact that my street empties onto Grand Blvd. at a point where the median divides the road, I had to get on the sidewalk and ride to the next block where it is easier to cross. I was weaving through the sticks and glass when, lying half open and perched like a tent, a light reddish brown wallet caught my eye. Looking around I did not see anyone nearby that might have dropped it, so I picked it up. I opened the wallet to get a clue about the owner. Inside the wallet was the driver’s license of a young man, a bus pass, and a bunch of various denomination bills, mostly ones. Knowing I had limited daylight and not having my reading glasses on, I decided to deal with the wallet later. I zipped it up in my windbreaker pocket and continued on my way. I did a hard ride, working constantly for about twenty five miles. It was a cool evening interspersed with light sprinkles of chilly rain from the spotty clouds. It was quite refreshing. The sun descending through the clear space above the horizon lent a golden glow to the numerous sails in the middle of the lake; what a great way to end a day.

By the time I got home I had almost forgotten about the wallet. I remembered it as Becky and I were chatting about her most recent mosaic and its acceptance into this group show that she had really wanted to get in. As the conversation moved on to my grumbling stomach and what we were going to do about it, I remembered my find. “ Hey, I found a wallet on the street!” I said. “Let’s see if we can track the kid down.” So we got out a laptop and pulled the driver's license from the wallet. I put my glasses on so I could read it. ”Jordan Laquon Daniels” it read.  I calculated that Jordan was only seventeen. The license and the bus card were brand new; so was the wallet (it still had the store’s magnetic barcode chip inside.) I pulled out the cash and counted it, partly out of curiosity but also to be able to ask any impostor Jordan to name the contents of the wallet and prove himself. It was exactly one hundred dollars in a strange assortment of bills: three twenties, two fives, a ten and twenty ones. There was no rhyme or reason to the way they had been stuffed into the wallet. The twenties, fives, and the ten were all sandwiched between layers of every-which-way ones. This was the kid’s first wallet. “Hell, he hasn’t even decided how he is going to carry it yet, back right pocket, back left, front pocket-for security. No wonder he lost it!”

Looking through all the evidence I began to feel a great desire to get this wallet back to the kid as soon as possible. “This must be crushing him right about now. It’s probably the most money he has ever had. He probably has been working at his first job for less than two weeks. He decided with his first check that he was going to get a shiny new wallet to keep his big new money, his unblemished driver’s license and his barely used bus pass." My heart was breaking for Jordan over the intense feelings of failure and loss I know that I would be feeling were it a seventeen year old me losing my proud new wallet and incalculable wealth,.......probably on the day before my first fully funded date with whoever that girl I'd had that unbearable crush on for the last month was...and not to mention the shame of having to tell anyone else what happened..Ok, so I was letting my imagination go on a bit. But now I was determined. We tried to find a phone number through various methods but no luck, and no listing. “He probably only has a cell phone” Becky said. “land lines are for old people like us.” No listing for any Daniels at the address. “Hmm, let’s assume that the address is correct. It's unlikely that his family has moved since he got this from the DMV.” We decide we will take his wallet to the address on the license.

Mapquest: The address is an apartment in Green Hill. “The Hill” has some of the roughest and poorest neighborhoods in our city. But it is early so we decide to head that way. The thought that Jordan may come from a more economically depressed background makes me want to get the wallet and the cash back to him all the more, but finding out that he lived in “The Hill” made me middle aged white guy out of my element uneasy. It shocked me to find myself confronting stereotypical quasi racist and class conscious feelings that I would have sworn I did not possess. Here is the joke: A middle aged, middle class white guy goes into the poorest most crime ridden minority neighborhood in the city at night to return a wallet full of money. Humor, common sense, revulsion at my reaction were colliding with a desire to turn Jordan’s bad night into a good one. “Let’s go”  I had not reacted in fear at being the “other” in quite a while, and I knew I did not like it. And I did not know my way around Green Hill.

Buckfield rd. to Schiller, Left on Schiller, Right on Masterson, Right on Bradley. Could the kid live in a worse looking apartment complex? On the left was a gated group of buildings with good lighting. That was not where we were going. The one next door, Jordan’s complex, was massive and sprawling. It also looked about a third rented, judging from the scarcity of lit windows, bare porches, empty parking spots. No one had plants. In my earlier trepidation, I had imagined just such a place. Three young men were drinking tall boys under the absence of the street lamp at one entrance. We took the other. Winding around the complex we were struck by the sad shape the place was in. Twice as we were driving by, security lamps flickered out. “What kind of motion detectors are those?” Becky asked with a chuckle. “I’d hate to be a woman living alone in this place” She said more seriously. We found the address after winding quite a way through the dim maze. It was at the very far end of the complex. We climbed the stairs to 3394 and knocked. No answer. I was in the process of circling my cell number and writing a note on the back of my business card; “Jordan, I found something of yours. Call me, I’ll arrange to get it back to you." when the door across the hall opened and a young woman came half way out the door to tell us that nobody lived there anymore. Right behind her an older woman came out. I asked if they new Jordan.

“Oh yes, but they’re gone. Don’t know where they went, What’s this about?”

“Well, I found something that may be important to him and I’d like to return it.”

“Oh, Well I still talk to his mother.....sometimes.”

“Hey, I Know Jordan” A young man’s voice from below “ sure do” He seemed interested in knowing what I had found.

“No, not sure where they live; can’t help you there”  The mother said. “I could give her your card though,.... if I see her”

“That would be just great, thank you” and I gave her the card.

So we left it at that and drove back to our part of town. I got a little lost on the way home and had to back track a bit. It was good to be back in familiar territory. We had neglected dinner and it was nearly 9 Pm when we got to the plaza by our house.

We haggled over where to eat. In the end our first choice, a fancy little upscale cafe, was already closing, and we were left with:

“El Fenix?”

“Ok”

I was thinking that the wallet might sit on my dresser for quite while. But as we talked over dinner. We started putting things together.

“You know, I was thinking that he was getting on a bus because I found it near the bus stop. But how could he get on the bus without his bus pass? He was getting off the bus. He was coming to the plaza when he lost his wallet.”

“He was coming to work!”

“He may still be at work. Or maybe not, but it fits the evidence. Where would a kid like that work around here?”

“The grocery store! It’s the biggest employer in the plaza”

After dinner we went over to Albertson’s to ask around.

The first woman we asked did not seem to know him, but pointed to tall boy at a register. “He’s been here longer”

As soon as he was approached, Eugene (the name on his tag), smiled broadly and said “Wallet? Yea, Jordan just started working here. He came in tonight all upset about his lost his wallet.”

“Is he here still?”

“No, he’s gone home already.”

He did not have a phone number on file, so Eugene told me that he would be working this Saturday. The next day, Friday, I got a call from his Jordan's Mother. I guess the woman I spoke to at the apartment really did know how to reach her. We had a nice little chat about a few things including how important it is for the young to start out with a sense of surety, confidence and accomplishment. I told her I would be taking her son his wallet on Saturday afternoon. She thanked me. And I thanked her.

I may thank Jordan too.

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This is a true story from my life this week. The names have been changed to protect the innocent. I think it illustrates an interesting point that I can relate to writing. One of the things I remind myself of in life and in art is not to be afraid to follow a lead if it feels like the right thing to do, especially if it takes me outside my comfort zone. Because that is where we grow.

Writing Prompt for 9/26/09: Tell us or show us how you got outside your comfort zone lately. What did it teach you about your art or your life?

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