HOPE FOR THE FUTURE

 

(Image Courtesy of FreePik.com)

Considering all the bad news lately, especially for seniors worried about our retirement funds, etc., I’d like to share a true feel good story with you that happened to my wife and I the other day.

To put this into perspective, I have to begin with some not so good news first, so please bear with me before bailing.

About a month ago my wife was grocery shopping and a woman lifted her wallet out of her purse while she was being distracted. The wallet contained credit cards, bank debit cards about $200 in cash and other assorted bits and pieces of information. Fortunately her driver license and health card were not in the wallet.

Once she went to pay for her groceries at the cash register she noticed the wallet was gone and panic stations set in.

A police report was filed and we then spent three days sorting out the credit and debit cards with the various banks.

I must admit, we live in a very safe small town and we have been fortunate to never have experienced being the victims of crime, so this was a real wake-up for us and an extremely stressful event for my wife as you may imagine. At least she wasn’t held up and robbed, or injured

The police were aware of a gang of individuals in a neighbouring city just 10 minutes away from us who had been stealing from other unsuspecting folks. The police had been aware of this group and told us that there was little if any hope of finding my wife’s wallet. So that was that it, “Gone with the Wind….”

Yesterday we received a call from a number we didn’t recognize and because we are constantly getting calls from scammers, con artists and duct cleaners we don’t answer the phone if we don’t recognize who is calling. If it's important, they can leave a message. They did not. Ten minutes later the same number called and once again left no message.

About an hour later, the same phone number called a third time and I picked it up as I was prepared to tell whoever was kept calling to bugger off, but instead a rather young voice explained that he had found a wallet with my wife’s name and number in it and asked if I would I like to come and pick it up at his house?

Naively I asked if there was anything in the wallet and he said there were some cards in it, but alas, and no big surprise, sans cash.

I imagined the lad on the phone was quite young, probably a teenager, so I said okay, wrote down his address and said I’d be there in about 15 minutes. I did a quick Google Street view search to make sure I wasn’t going to be driving into a Beirut war zone.

Now I acknowledge that at 70 years of age and certainly in no condition to defend myself if need be, this may not have been my best thought process, but I’m still a young 30 year old tough guy within my aging brain. Well, except when I'm in the doctor’s examination room as he is probing me in places that I don’t feel the need to describe right here. It seems that being inspected, detected and injected is my full time occupation these days.

So I screwed up my courage and headed out the door to face whatever mighty transpire during said interaction, but not before my equally aged wife insisted on coming with me as my personal bodyguard should physical reinforcements be required.

Now before I get to that, part of my trepidation was based on the fact that although we live in what is usually a crime free area as I mentioned, we have a high end hotel a few minutes away and lately multiple patrons have checked out of the hotel the next morning to find their car windows smashed and whatever contents left inside the car the previous night, gone.

The police have managed to capture some, but not all of the ne'er-do-wells and they were all in the range of 15 years old and they were all from the very part of the neighbouring city I mentioned located 10 minutes away from my house.

So off we trot to face whatever life will give us during this adventure which could be a simple handover, or a possible hostage negotiation of my wife’s wallet.

I pull up in front of the caller’s home and as I exit it, I leave the motor running just in case she has to make a dash for safety, leaving me to deal with whatever lurks behind the front door. I lean over and give her what I think may be the last kiss we ever share and make my way up the front steps. As I reach to pull open the screen door, a lad about the age of 14 or 15 opens the door and simply hands me the wallet. He looks out the door and points to a couple of pine trees across the street and tells me that’s where the wallet was found.

Relieved that there were no “yoots” in ski masks jumping out from their hiding spots armed with a rolls of duct tape to take me prisoner and hold me for ransom, I reached into my pocket and pulled out a twenty dollar bill as a reward. Just then the young lad said it was actually his little brother who found the wallet. So I suggested that maybe he could share the twenty with his brother, at which time a little guy, about the size of a garden gnome, popped his head from around a corner and proceeded to relieve his older brother of the reward money without saying a word to him or I.

As we drove home, both my wife and I felt a wave of gratitude that even though the world can seem like a scary and dangerous place at times, there were still some young people around this world that are good people and feeling a little hope for the future.

Will I hesitate to dive into an unknown situation like this again at the drop of the hat with such little concern? Hell no, I may be old but I won’t be that stupid (again:-)!