perspective

This morning I walked home with my pockets empty, no keys to let me in my house. Luckily my roommate was home, and at the time I figured I had left my keys and the attached red pouch, with my license, credit cards and ID, inside. But once inside, they were nowhere to be found: purse, backpack, desk and countertops scoured without find. I remembered that I had used the keys to lock the door, then had returned to grab something from my room, so I knew that if I'd left the keys in the house after the return, they would be either in 1) the door, or 2) somewhere visible I would've tossed them, like a table or dresser or the bed. They were in none of these places.

Which left my trajectory from after leaving my place to returning to it. After the keys' last use, I got on the handlebars of his bike; he thought it was safer than walking in the dark with the bike. I had a bookish childhood in which I never learned to ride a bicycle, much less ride on the handlebars, and I was hesitant. The streets were newly damp from fresh rain, still warm in the late summer/early fall. It smelled clear, but the air had the presence of humidity dissolving after the rain, one of my favorite weathers. I leaned back for more balance, and braced my face against his. It was late with pockets of quiet, and pockets of silent sirens where streetlights had gone out, so that his breaths felt close. I'm so used to the New Haven street wanderers and police cars that the visuals of danger don't incite much, and I felt safe flowing by in a breeze.

Not being able to find my keys and wallet the next day, the only other possibility was that they had fallen on this ride. Despite not being fazed by red and blue lights, I knew that if they had fallen in this part of New Haven they were pretty much lost to me. But I tracked my way back, this time on foot, and when strangers tried to make conversation with me (I learned that the large man who sits on the porch of the big green house is Aaron), I even asked them if they'd seen my keys. I went back to his house and rummaged those rooms too, and then scanned the streets again on my way back. Nothing. On the way back, I stopped at the Yale Security Office, who gave me the number to the central security office, who gave me the number to the Yale police, who gave me the number to the New Haven police--all of whom were very nice, none of whom had seen my stuff.

So I came back home with my roommate's keys. I called my friend who has a copy of my car key. I brought these to the locksmith kitty corner from our place, who said they wouldn't be back until 12:45. So I went back home, and canceled my credit card and my ATM debit card. I looked up how to get another driver's license, and realized that it's a bitch to do from across country, and called home to ask my parents to go to the DMV in California, and see if they could fill out the forms there for me. I went back to the locksmith, still closed at 12:45, and decided to go to our landlord down the street to see if I could get a copy of our house keys. I could, for $25. I headed back to the locksmith for my car key, still closed at 1:00. So I walked to campus to get a new Yale ID, for $20, paid for by cash borrowed from my friend. Walking back I passed the locksmith, who was finally open, but who could not copy my car key because it has a chip in it. Instead, I had to go to a locksmith in West Haven, 15 minutes away. After calling them first to make sure they could make a copy of my key, I drove over there, where they made me a copy for $35. I handed them the one credit card I had that hadn't been in my nowhere-to-be-found wallet, and they handed it back to me: "Um, this is expired." Only $7 in cash left, no other cards, no friends nearby--shit shit shit. I got back in my car, maneuvered it in the small awkward parking lot, called Bank of America who told me to get a temporary ATM at the bank, then backed my car back up into a spot, and went back to the locksmith to ask if there was a nearby Bank of America. I drove several minutes down to it, where they told me I couldn't get a temporary card since my account had been open in CA, and here we are in CT. But I could still get cash with a photo ID and my SSN; I had an old license that has expired, but luckily now I also had a new Yale ID. So I withdrew some cash, went back to the locksmith, and got my new car key.

On the drive home my parents called and told me they couldn't get a license for me; I had to be present at the DMV in California, so that they could take a new photograph and attain my fingerprints. I won't be back in CA until December, and I'm driving cross country and back before that happens; a license would be useful.

I came home, and sighed.

The one thing I couldn't recover was the least important, the coffeeshop card with which I'd ranked up almost enough coffees to get a free one. After the day's escapades I escaped to the coffeeshop, told them I'd lost the card and could I get a new one? It turns out they had my name in the computer, with my records and that this coffee would be my free one. So I upgraded from small to large, and told them that this was the first thing I'd lost that I'd gotten back without effort or expense.

As I settled down with my large drink to write about this, I received a call from my other roommate. I had called her in the morning to see if she'd seen my keys in the door. But I didn't see them anywhere in the house where she might have placed them, and she hadn't called me to tell me she'd found them, so I figured this hadn't happened. It turns out that it had; she had found them in the door, taken them with her, and wasn't able to call me until later this evening. After I spent the day replacing things I don't even really want back but "need" in some form.

If someone were to ask me hypothetically, whether I'd go through all that, to have wasted over four hours and eighty dollars, all because I sat atop handlebars of a bike ridden by a silly sweet boy whose face I could feel the whole time, I (like anyone else) would say no. And it's not something that logically follows; I didn't need to lose all my things, scrounge to replace them, eventually find that I'd never lost them--none of that needed to happen in order for me to have that ride. It could've happened, and I could've kept my stuff at the same time. But the comparison changes perspective. Having a nice moment is one thing, and having its niceness sustain itself through moments of not-so-niceness is another. Knowing how little the inconvenience of those four hours of wasted time and money will matter to me tomorrow, and feeling how those four minutes with him will last, I would have to say yes, it was worth it, to really feel what's close to me and what's not.