I really am! I lose things all the time.

For example, a few months ago I went to my friend N’s birthday dinner party. I managed to fit everything I needed — present, card, novel, metropass, emergency chapstick, etc — into my smallest purse and off I went. Some hours later, home I came.

The next day, I couldn’t find my metropass anywhere. This is a pretty critical thing; buying a monthly pass saves me something like $80/mo. during the school year (somewhat less in the summer, but still a significant amount). No pass means buying tokens, which means no unlimited rides, having to grab transfers all over the place, and no hop-on hop-off privileges. Plus the added expense of buying the things.

I knew that I had to have had it with me when I got home, because I had got home in the first place. But where could it be? I searched through my room, I completely emptied my purse — nothing. I had just plain lost it.

Cut to, oh, I dunno, maybe a week and a half or two weeks later. Not long had passed, but it was long enough that the month had changed and I had spent the end of the last one buying tokens. P and I were going to spend the day at an amusement park and so I grabbed my purse again and filled it with many the same sorts of things — (new) metropass, emergency novel, &c — and off we went.

On the way, I had cause to pull out my pocket-edition copy of Pride and Prejudice, my perpetual subway companion and default emergency novel. Tucked neatly between the pages? My last month’s metropass. Apparently when I frantically emtied my purse … three times … I had neglected to look in the things contained in the purse.

Stellar.

At least I’ve learned that particular lesson: books are sneaky and will eat your belongings.

Now to find my debit card …