Listen to the Voice Inside

The following is the best kind of lesson: the first-hand, object-lesson sort. Hearken and heed!:

I broke two of my cardinal rules and the lapse cost me a lot in time and money and effort, plus loss of sleep and dented self-esteem. One of the rules is philosophical or emotional or instinctive. The other is purely practical. If I hadn’t broken the first one I wouldn’t have broken the other.

Rule One: Always listen to that voice inside your head. It’s paying closer attention to your surroundings than your conscious mind is, especially when you’re engaged in something new or complicated, like navigating the Paris Metro.

Rule Two: Never carry your wallet in your back pocket. Self-explanatory, nest-ce pas?

So I’m standing on a Metro train and I realize that my wallet is in my back pocket. Eternal vigilance is the price for keeping your stuff, and I let my concentration waver. Worse, I realized it was there because the voice inside was saying something like, “Danger, danger Will Robinson!” (It doesn’t always know my name, and it thinks it’s the robot in “Lost in Space,” but the warnings it dispenses are still valid.) I reach around and feel that my wallet is there, but I don’t move it immediately because it would be inconvenient at that exact moment and because I’m an idiot.

We get to our stop where we’re changing trains and I put my hand back there and the wallet is gone. There’s that moment when you start touching all your pockets at once, and then repeat, and then repeat again, and all the while the sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach is settling in your gut and the sense of loss and confusion surround you like a dark, damp, depressing cloud because you know it’s gone and you know why and you can’t even blame the thief because that’s what thieves do: they steal, and your job is to keep them from doing their job.  I’m much more upset with myself for making myself a target– and worse– for ignoring the warning I sent myself. I got lazy. I got complacent. I got careless. I dropped my guard. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

So I lost a few hundred bucks, all my credit cards, my ATM card (the hardest blow of all, because it represents access to money) and my driver’s license. I still have my passport, my smart phone, my camera, my laptop, my clothes and my plane ticket home.

This has created many complications for me, mostly having to do with money, or more specifically, the lack of it. But I am with family and so I have resources to turn to, which got me to wondering: What would someone do if it happened while traveling alone? I guess you could wire home for money, but doesn’t it even cost money to send the wire? Could you go to the American Embassy? I don’t have the answers, and I feel as though I should. I’m going to find the answers to the questions, just in case.

Eurostar tomorrow to London– tickets paid for by my aunt. Going to an Air-BnB in London, paid for by my cousin. I guess I’ll have to tap them for the train fare to Cambridge where I’ll be staying with my friends Rebecca and Pedro. Then I’ll need train fare to Heathrow on the 15th to catch my flight back to Seattle. Then there will be more family to borrow from to have money to drive home, where I’ll have new credit and debit cards waiting for me (The first thing I did was call and cancel all cards. Everyone else was checking out the Eiffel Tower and I was on the phone. I hear it looks nice).

Old Wild Will Shakespeare has Iago say, “Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing; ‘Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands…” Of course, Will didn’t lose his ATM card…