Well travelled: I not it

Now you are thinking, what does she mean – she travels a lot so of course she’s well travelled, but as we should now know from fallacious headlines – things are not always as they seem.

This is more a story of my prowess as a finder of all things misplaced.

As is my want, I put on my walking shoes, gathered up reading glasses, camera and looked for my change purse to put in the backpack that I use to walk to the village for both coffee and mail most mornings: change purse had gone missing.

Check and re-check purse, check and re-check office, check and re-check bedroom, dump contents of purse onto desk, check and re-check car (on the thought that after our trip to the restaurant last night maybe it had fallen out of my purse). Nothing.

Upshot: had to take the car to the village as needed to then return to the restaurant and all this within the hour as I had loaned the car to my oldest son and he was leaving in an hour.

Breakfast with my usual band of friends (when it’s just the three and me we can have some highly entertaining discussions); off to the restaurant. Checked where I had parked, went to the restaurant and inquired, then checked where we had been sitting – nothing. Asked at the small grocers in case someone had found it on the parking and turned it in – nothing. 

All the while I am using a technic that I have pushed upon more than one person who has misplaced something: think back to the last time you saw it, had it, used it.

Ah ha, hadn’t actually taken it out at the restaurant so the last time that I was sure to have used it was yesterday afternoon up in the village when I went for my afternoon coffee. So back up to the village, where – miracle of miracles (but then I do tend to be lucky that way) – I had dropped it on the parking and someone had turned it in to our small grocers. (Had I thought faster, I would have checked there first and saved myself the 5 or 6 kilometre trip to-ing and fro-ing, but first thing in the morning, our brains are sometimes not yet in gear!)

Point: I still can find things (that I shouldn’t have dropped or misplaced in the first place, but let he who is without blame, cast the first stone); thinking produces results; there are still honest people in the world; I can travel great distances for not much.

By the way this is just a change purse, no ID, the only things of value (beyond the approx. Swiss francs 20.00 that will be there usually) were my Cumulus number (fidelity card to the local grocery store) and the chip for the village carton crusher (deposit had been Swiss francs 20.00): still worth recuperating.

Your reward for wading through this story that-all-of-us-experience more than once in any given week – the roses and flowers on the dock from my yesterday’s walk.