What Goes Around Comes Around

THE UNIVERSE PAYS ATTENTION TO KINDNESS. BELIEVE.

Photo by Mei-Ling Mirow on Unsplash

Did it again yesterday. Left my wallet — it’s one of those mesh things that fit so easily into the back pocket — in the unisex bathroom of Kaiser Medical Center in San Francisco. Not your ordinary nobody’s-around-here spot.

Did I notice? Of course not. I was merrily walking home about ten blocks east, listening to a good book via my one earbud, trusting the other ear to pick up any beeping bike about to wipe me out as it whizzed around the corner.

Instead, my phone beeped, interrupting the book narrator. Given no choice, I answered. An unknown male voice was speaking calmly over the traffic noise. “Are you Fran Johns?” he asked. Who else would I be? Didn’t he know who he was calling? “I am,” I replied, anxious to get back to my book.

“This is Kaiser Family Medicine. Someone just brought your wallet to the check-in desk,” he said. Oh, dear. I patted my very empty back pocket.

This would be the same wallet I have left in countless coffee shops and bookstores, other miscellaneous bathrooms and twice in airport security areas. One of those was in Madrid. Some people learn; some don’t.

I did an about-face and returned to the check-in desk, where three or four Kaiser people were busily working. “Ummm,” I said, “I don’t have any identification, but someone found . ..” One of the clerks looked up with a broad smile. “I’d know you anywhere,” he said, handing it over.

Moral? One kind stranger turned what would’ve been a nightmare of changing passwords and obtaining replacement cards into one more happy San Francisco day. Thanks, whoever you are.

In my (self) defense, I am notorious for tracking down errant library books or returning found objects to safekeeping, once including a frightened three-year-old in Macy’s.

The universe notices.