It’s a good thing my head is screwed on

This past Tuesday I took a blissfully child-free trip to Target. I wandered the aisles. I browsed. I picked out all the best clearance Valentine’s Day candy without any grubby little fingers grabbing at it. I spent a good hour and a half filling my cart with the kind of useless, pretty things that make Target the Best Place To Shop Ever.

Half way through the cashier ringing up my purchase, I realized my wallet wasn’t in my bag.

SHIT.

I blushed and apologized and died of embarrassment and swore to the cashier four thousand times that I’m sure it was just in my car and I would be RIGHT BACK, OK? PLEASE DON’T PUT ALL MY STUFF AWAY.

So I went on a hunt for my wallet. It wasn’t in the car. It wasn’t at Guest Service. It wasn’t in the parking lot. I called home – E said it wasn’t on the counter. I drove back to the doctor’s office where I had been just before Target. The nice nurses looked everywhere but we couldn’t find it.

It’s a big wallet. It’s also bright red. It’s always been really hard to misplace and isn’t the sort of thing you drop without noticing. Now I was PANICKED. The stuff in there is IRREPLACEABLE. How am I going to find the time to get a new driver’s license with two kids to drag around? I can’t see a doctor without my military ID (it’s my insurance card) and I can’t get a NEW military ID unless I can get on base which I can’t do without a military ID. IT’S AN ENDLESS CIRCLE OF HORROR. Not to mention the credit cards, my social security card, my membership cards at the aquarium and seaport and the four hundred rewards cards to various stores. For some reason I was oddly worried about those. How will I ever replace my Gymboree Rewards card? MY LIFE IS OVER.

I drove all the way home on the brink of tears. Once I saw the empty counter and realized my wallet was good and really, truly missing I lost it. Sob sob sob. Hopeless despair. E finally realized I wasn’t going to just pull it together and got up to help me look. WHATEVER  HUSBAND. IT’S LOST. FOREVERRRRRRRR. There’s really no point in going to look in the car because…

Oh, hey. Lookit there. It was under the passenger seat. It must have fallen out of my bag and slid back to where I couldn’t see it while I was driving. Oopsies.

I drove back to Target and collected my cart o’stuff, most of which suddenly seemed stupid and silly and not worth buying but at this point I was too embarrassed to put anything back. In fact, I threw in a couple extra things from the check-out lane to, I don’t know, make up for being such a moron. Because somehow in my head three packs of gum and a chapstick is what it costs Target to leave my cart between two check-out counters for 45 minutes.

Yesterday I did all our meal planning and went to Stop & Shop to buy $200 worth of groceries. Half way through the checker ringing up my purchase, I realized my wallet wasn’t in my bag.

SHIT.

I panicked. I blushed and apologized and died of embarrassment. I told her to finish putting all my stuff in my reusable bags and I would be RIGHT BACK with my wallet, swearsies. No, really, I have money! I can afford these things! I am not some sort of crazy person who just likes putting things in a cart for the hell of it!

I checked the cart. I checked the parking lot. I drove home. I checked the driveway and the back porch and the counter. I started to freak out. AGAIN, UNIVERSE? REALLY?

I yelled at E “I lost my wallet AGAIN! I just left a whole cart of groceries with the cashier and she thinks I’m a crazy person. Can you believe it? TWICE in one week!”

E looked at me and said “Did you even check the car?”

Guess where my wallet was.

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25 Responses to “It’s a good thing my head is screwed on”

  1. Cole says:

    It sounds like you need a vacation!

  2. APRIL says:

    Thank you for sharing… I am not going to pretend as though I have not had similiar experiences with my keys – or Get Fit Challenge BEFORE Stats!

  3. Audrey says:

    hahaha! I did this a month ago.

  4. Katrina says:

    Ha ha! Love it! Not laughing at you, but with you! I drove for 2 hours looking for a Bank of America this past week (my GPS kept taking me to banks that were no longer BofA’s), finally got to one, pulled up to window, then suddenly realized I did not have my wallet. But I knew where it was–at home lying on the desk with the check I needed to deposit sitting on top. Convenient.

  5. Nicole says:

    It happens to the best of us! Really, how long since you had a good night’s sleep? I have run into neighbors in the stores and utterly not recognized them because they were out of context. They think I’m an idiot, or a snob, or an idiot snob. Both times I clearly recall it happening when my kids were newborns. And I once lost my wallet under the seat of my car and promptly got into a minor accident. The cop was there asking for my license and I was sobbing and searching everywhere and freaking out because now on top of everything else, I was going to get cited for driving without my license…it was a disaster. It was also the second time I left the house alone after Matt was born. I felt like the universe was punishing me for needing time to myself.

    • bebehblog says:

      Both times I was kid-free, which is why I was so convinced I had left the wallet at home – when I pulled all the “necessary for a baby but not for me” stuff out of the bag I though I had pulled out the wallet too and it was under a pile of burp cloths on the counter. THAT’LL TEACH ME TO GO ANYWHERE WITHOUT MY KIDS.

  6. NainaDG says:

    My phone always ends up under the front passenger seat or in between the passenger seat and the door. And I panic and freak out and yes, I’ve even cried thinking about how I would have to spend money to replace my phone, but it always works out. Its having kids I tell you, they mess with our brains

  7. Londonmum says:

    oh god that is the worst. I hate those total “break out into a cold sweat” moments. I feel your pain.

  8. Leah says:

    The nice thing about big mostly public transportation bound is that you literally cannot get very far without your wallet. Not to say there hasn’t been days that I have taken out my debit card for whatever reason and never put it back.

    Oh, and it sounds like you need a bag that closes all the way at the top.

  9. Alison says:

    Oh, I just love you so much right now. This same thing happened to me…right down to “don’t even bother looking in the car. I already did”, yet the husband managed to find it there. Only once though. The store I was at wouldn’t hold my stuff though. I was so mad. It’s really nice to know I’m not the only one who does this sort of thing.

  10. becca says:

    i didn’t mean to, but i totally giggled out loud at the end of this. i’m guessing you’ll never “lose” your wallet again after these two experiences :)

  11. When Spencer was a newborn, I developed a delightful habit of leaving my keys in the front door. It got to the point that when I was signing for a package, my mailman asked if I wanted him to just drop them in the mailbox (which is right by the front door) so he wouldn’t knock and risk waking the baby.

  12. Marie Green says:

    I’ve totally done this– not lost my wallet, but left it at home. Trouble is, both times I’ve done it, I’ve been shopping someplace 30+ miles from home. Nothing like being a FEW TOWNS away and then realize you don’t have your wallet and can’t even buy you and your hungry preschooler some LUNCH. Grah.

  13. lalaland13 says:

    Ohh I have done this so many times, but with my debit card rather than wallet. Most recently it was at Sonic on my way to a night meeting. I ordered yummy mozzarella sticks and a Coke Zero, and went looking for my debit card. Nope, did not exist, at least not in my car. By the time the nice carhop brought out my food, I had to tell her I couldn’t find it and tried to use my credit card. For some reason it didn’t go through (at the time I thought I was a terrible and irresponsible person financially, which may be true, but I suspect she tried to run it as a debit card) Finally, after dumping out my purse in the passenger seat, I had to hand her the food back, mortified. I was sure she thought I was some kind of criminal. Hell, she probably thought I stole my car and stuffed the real owner in the trunk.

    So I went to the meeting hungry. Later that night, I found my card had fallen between the passenger seat and the door. Sigh.

    • bebehblog says:

      E lost his debit card IN our Jeep and we STILL haven’t found it. It was sitting by the gear shift and slid…somewhere we can’t see or reach. He actually had to order another one.

  14. This just goes to further my idea that I just need to lanyard everything important to my purse, or to each other, or to my pants….any of those would work.

  15. Amanda says:

    Right before my wedding I lost my ENTIRE ring of keys. It was horrible. For so many reasons. Weeks later the wedding was done, we were home from our honeymoon and i was trying to decrap my house.

    There were my keys in a Target bag full of random crap I’d bought and not used yet.

    So, I think it’s actually Targets fault.

  16. Omygosh, I can’t quit laughing.

  17. Holly says:

    If it would make you feel better I have totally done this before, in the days before I even had a kid.

    Also, you had me cracking up at “I am not some sort of crazy person who just likes putting things in a cart for the hell of it!”

  18. Laura says:

    They don’t call it mommy brain for nothing! If it makes you feel any better (and it probably doesn’t), I had to leave my Target purchase at the counter a few days ago. Fortunately, I knew my wallet was in the car, so I made a mad dash out to get it and a mad dash back inside. I was also child free (uh-mazing), which enabled such a feat. Whew! Just remember — tomorrow’s a new day!

  19. Kim says:

    I’ve actually convinced Target TWICE to let me pay by check without seeing my license because I’ve forgotten my wallet. But the absolute worst is my car keys. My car has a keyless ignition, so I just need to have the keys in my purse for it to start. The problem is when my hubby is dropping me off somewhere, and I leave with my purse and he drives off before realizing that once he stops the car he can’t start it again. Ooooops

  20. Julie S. says:

    I lost my house keys about 4 months ago- they were in the OTHER diaper bag. SO frustrating!

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