The Wallet

The Wallet

A Difficult Journey Home

That girl! How many times is she going to lose me? Her teachers call her scatterbrained, ditsy, and highly frustrating. I remember once a librarian at this school told her mother after the fourth lost book in two months, "Lizzie is a sweet, wonderful young lady, but she would lose her head if it weren't tied on." Well, the last time I looked, no ties were securing her head in place, and it was still there, so that is at least one thing she hasn't lost recently.

I know I am small and inexpensive, but not many wallets, especially those purchased for young girls, are very extravagant. Heaven knows Lizzie's parents would not spend much on something they know she will eventually lose.

My contents would not be a significant loss to anyone but Lizzie. Two dollars, pictures swapped with classmates, with salutations, and a date written on the back of each one, and her hard-earned driver's license. Hard-earned because she managed to fail the driving portion three times—three! Driver's licenses in 1966 didn't even contain a photo of the driver. I am sure she may fret over losing her driver's license and the loss of only one of the photos. She most definitely will mourn the loss of the photo of her sixteen-year-old Uncle, who was killed last month in a tragic car crash. I remember that so well. She kept taking that photograph out of me and cried over it until I was sure she would ruin the paper on which it was printed. I felt her pain and wished I could have done something to make it all go away. But after all, I am only a wallet and could not do or say anything that could have helped.

So here I lie, under the bleachers in the gymnasium. It appears she has looked everywhere but exactly where she lost it. That is the case with most lost objects. If people looked where they lost things, nothing would ever really be lost, would it?

I remember the day she lost me. She was sitting with her cheerleading friends, talking and laughing and showing them a photo of a boy she was enamored with this week. It seemed to change weekly with Lizzie. Nothing kept her attention for long. Maybe that is why she was so forgetful. She laid me down beside her, and when it was her turn to show her coach that she had finally learned the routine that the team had practiced repeatedly, she ran to the floor without even a thought of me. Her hand brushed me aside as she stood up, and I took the long fall to the floor under the bleachers.

Day in and day out, I lay there watching and hoping that one day, the ditsy Lizzie would remember where she had last seen me. Once she realized where she was at the time of my disappearance, she would most certainly check under the bleachers, and I would be safe and sound in her possession again. I watched and listened as she spoke to her friends about my loss and all the places she had looked. You would think that at least one of them would remember, but much to my disappointment, no one but Lizzie seemed that interested in finding me. After all, to her friends, I was just one of the many items Lizzie lost in a week. Many of those items she found, and many she did not.

Over the years, I wondered why the cleaners did not come across me with their big dust mops, but all they did was shove me aside and wedge me under a corner hidden from view. I was lost but witnessed many of Lizzie's high school moments. Her first dance with a very handsome boy I was sure she would marry one day. The time she won the high school beauty pageant. The time she crowned the next winner of that pageant and performed so beautifully that if I could have cried for joy, I would have. She and I always listened to all the songs from "My Fair Lady," and I witnessed her on stage singing most of them. I was so proud of her.

Over the years, I witnessed her repeatedly losing and searching for items she had lost. Most she would find, but she never found me.

The last thing I remember witnessing was her graduation. They said that her class would be the last graduating class of her school. Then, a few days later, everything went dark. There were no sounds of young people talking and laughing as there had been in the past, nothing but darkness and silence.

One day, after many hours spent in this abyss, there were loud noises. The noises were faint at first and then closer, and finally, they were upon me. The moment the noises were right on top of me, it seemed like the world's weight came crashing down. Until then, I had hope because I was the eternal optimist like my Lizzie. The hope of being found. But now, if it was dark before, nothing compared to this darkness and the crushing weight I experienced. So, I lay there in the dark for years.—nothing but silence, a crushing weight, and total darkness. I was alone, totally alone.

Day after day passed with only my memories to keep me company—some happy and some sad, and the agony of missing my Lizzie and her ditzy ways. I even missed her and her friends and their endless chatter. If an object could die, this was when I would have wished for death.

Then, one day, there were loud noises, very loud notices, similar to the ones I had heard before the world came crashing down on me. First, just the noises and the feeling of being pushed around, the weight being lifted, then back on me, lifted again, then back on me, and finally, a stream of light. Then a hand picked me up and started looking through me. It was not my Lizzie but a man. He put me in his pocket, and I heard him say, "I found somebody's wallet in the wall we just tore down. It looks like it has been here since the '60s, but I have a name, and I bet I can find the owner." Finally, there was a ray of hope that I would see my Lizzie again.

He took me to his home and laid me on a table by something he called a computer. When Lizzie had me, I never saw anything like it. He told the woman who was with him that he would " post it on Facebook. " I had no idea what that was, but the man seemed pretty excited about it and was sure he would locate my home, that he would locate my Lizzie. I was so excited and began to wonder how much she had changed and if she was as forgetful as an adult as she was as a teen. So many thoughts, so many hopes

Days passed, and then one day, the man sat down at the computer thingy and shouted, "Someone knows her, and they have messaged her that I have her wallet."

The next thing I knew, I was shoved into an envelope, and it seemed like I was traveling quite a distance. Days passed in darkness again until there was light, and I was looking up at a beautiful smiling face. There were lines on that face where there had been none before, but this was most certainly my Lizzie. She opened me, and the first thing she did was take out the one photo she cherished above all, and there were tears again. But these tears differed from those she had cried those many years ago. If I am not mistaken, they were tears of joy.

But what do I know? I am only a wallet.