Member-only story
Lost Wallet
How missing one little accessory can shape your whole worldview
Lose your wallet, and life stops. Your money ceases to exist. Your credit is null and void. Your personhood can’t be verified. You can’t legally operate the car you’re sitting in, as you frantically search your pockets for the missing item. You can’t even pick up a book from the library.
“When did you last see it?” people ask, instinctively. Every child knows to ask this question, including yours. But the answer is moot, because you know where you lost it: On the bike trail, as you took a five-mile ride along the Providence River. Somewhere along that route, as you pedaled especially hard, the wallet wriggled out of your back pocket and fell to the pavement.
“Someone will return it,” proclaims a woman you know, your son’s art teacher. “I have faith.”
You wish you had faith like that. But the loss of a wallet is an all-consuming event. You have to assume you’ll never see it again; indeed, you have to assume it’s fallen into malevolent hands, and your cards are now being used to buy every diamond and non-fungible token on the market. For all you know, your identity has already been used to open bank accounts and print dummy passports. Maybe a guy in a ski mask is driving his van slowly past your house, because he used the address printed…
