Did I Ever Tell You About The Time...

It all started here, at the Pet Clinic:


It was one of those days when I was rushing around, running lots of errands, trying to get everything done. I stopped at the Pet Clinic to pick up cat food. It was a large 16-pound bag, and I was carrying it over my shoulder, fireman style. I was balancing the bag with one hand and had my car keys and wallet in the other hand. I put it all on the roof of the car while I went to open the trunk. I dropped the bag of food in the trunk and drove away.

I had set my stuff on the roof of the car, like this:



My next stop was the grocery store. I gathered things in my cart and made my way to a cashier. I reached in my bag and my wallet was not there. I thought I must have left it in the car. I told the cashier I would be right back and went out to my car. My wallet was not there. Beginning to feel panicky, I thought of the last place I had it... the Pet Clinic. I got in my car and hurried back there. I ran inside and asked if anyone had found a wallet on the ground. The answer was no. It finally began to dawn on me that maybe I had left it on the roof of my car. In that case, it must have fallen off when I drove away.

I went out and walked all around the parking lot... no wallet. So then I started looking out on the road, along the route I had driven. The Pet Clinic is located on a country road that looks like this:


Back and forth I walked, on both sides of the road. Finally, I spotted a $5 bill lying in the grass:


I walked a little farther, and spotted a $20 dollar bill lying in the weeds:


I kept going, finding one bill after another. Were these mine? Did everything spill out of my wallet? Finally I found a receipt from McDonalds. I knew it was mine because I had gone there with my nieces the day before, and I recognized the purchases. But where was the wallet? Where were the credit cards and my driver's license?

After convincing myself I wasn't going to find anything more in the grass, I went back to my car and called my husband. When he answered the phone he said "Where are you? Did you drop you wallet?" I said "How did you know?". He told me a woman had just called our house. She had been driving down the road and had run over something; it was my wallet. She had taken it home with her, looked up our number and called our house.

My husband came to meet me at the Pet Clinic, with the woman's address. We drove to her house and retrieved my wallet. What a relief! Nothing else was missing, other than the money that had flown out along the road. Of course we were very grateful. We talked to her for a while and insisted that she take some of the money for her trouble. Thank goodness for her!

It was one of those days. But it turned out all right in the end; I was lucky.