“How did you let this happen to you?” The kindly worker at the Post Office near Shortridge and 10th streets smiled at me and turned away, chuckling under her breath. I had visited the station earlier in the day and a series of unfortunate incidents had made it necessary for me to return.
I am a frequent flyer at the Eastgate post office and the woman who laughed at me that day was someone who often inquired about my grandchildren. Years ago, she had read a column I had written about my grandbeauties and has processed my posts for them in New Jersey. She never fails to ask, “How are the grandkids?” and that never fails to please me. On this day, she was assisting me in the retrieval of a lost item.
During my visit to the station earlier in the day, I had taken a notebook from my messenger bag and from a zippered pocket, taken out a pen. I used the pen to write on something that I was posting, and after depositing the item in the appropriate slot, headed for home. About an hour after returning home, I looked in my messenger bag for my notebook, and could not find it. I live a disheveled life and, as I wrote in a social media post, “After frantically searching the warrens of my apartment, I called the Post Office.”
Several years ago, while stopped with a friend for a libation at a neighboring watering hole, a bandit tested the locks on her car and found them wanting. I had left my Timbuk2 messenger bag on the floor of the passenger side front seat, and when the two of us exited the establishment, I saw a man hustling away from her car. I checked for my bag: It was gone. I filed a police report, but there was little chance that the gendarmes were going to mobilize to find a messenger bag that contained, among other things, a notebook and two Cross Tech 3 pens. Shortly after that, my friend gifted me with a new notebook, a great fancy thing with “Take Notes” emblazoned on the cover. I did as commanded and took notes, some of which are mundane (“My sister called me. I love her”) and others of which, only me would care about: “CBS Sunday Morning – Sharon Gless of ‘Cagney and Lacy’; Sondheim’s ‘Send In The Clowns.’” But I also keep notes about events that I attend so that I can write about them for this publication. So, there’s that.
My call to the Post Office was a desperate attempt to find my notebook; I was rewarded when the man on the line told me, “It’s right here, waiting for you.” I hied my way back to the Post Office, showed my identification to the woman behind the plastic shield, who giggled at me and went to retrieve my notebook. She asked again, about my grandkids, and from my recovered notebook, I showed her a picture of my youngest.
There is this, in all of that: Someone found a leather notebook at a counter at the Eastgate Post Office. That person took the notebook to staff at the office, an act of kindness for which that person would receive neither compensation nor acknowledgement. Though I did not initially examine the contents of the notebook’s zippered bag, there was nothing missing. My unknown benefactor turned it in with its contents intact. As I wrote on my social media post, my notebook is more valuable to me, than anyone else. But “I do appreciate the kindness of that stranger” who turned it in.
Thank you, friend.
cjon3acd@att.net