I come from a family of losers. My mother and brother lost everyday things every day for a combined total of 187 years. My sister, nieces, nephews, and one of my sons still do. I am probably the biggest loser of all (though my niece Ellen and son Ben give me a run for my money).
Every day we Drydens lose our wallets, keys, glasses, sunglasses, cell phones, watches, earbuds, jewelry, pens, iPads, remotes, passports, Kindles, important documents, receipts, checks, membership cards, tickets—you name it. If it’s smaller than a Humvee, we lose it but, to our credit, almost always find it later. We don’t suffer or even worry as we turn the house upside-down. We have accepted our lot in life—it’s in our DNA—but our partners do.
For 50 years, my propensity for casually setting things down whenever I walk through the door without making a mental note of where I placed them has driven my wife, Judy, mad. Mad isn’t a strong enough term. It drives her batshit crazy. Like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, she screams, threatens, and a few times I’ve been scared she’d go after me with a knife when she’s discovered I lost something she deems important, like our passports while a driver is waiting to take us to the airport. Judy, you see, has never, ever misplaced anything and can’t understand why I wouldn’t consider it as essential as air, food, and water to dedicate brain cells to remembering where I left something as small and inconsequential to my daily life as a wallet or glasses. I (almost) always find whatever I misplace, and if I don’t, she does—that’s one of the two biggest reasons I married her, the other being to bear my children, one of whom, to her horror, is a loser, too.
Yesterday Judy and I arrived in Fort Lauderdale from an 11-day cruise. As we were packing the day before we left, I realized my good sunglasses, which I had bought several months ago to replace a pair I am almost sure were stolen from my gym locker, were missing. After searching high and low, I went out and bought another pair.
The next day we flew to Boston to board the ship. The cruise was swell, although our planned stop in Bonaire had to be scratched due to a storm that caused us to be rerouted to Portland, Maine, where 3,000 passengers who had packed for the tropics shivered through temperatures in the forties.
Months ago I had reserved a car from Hertz for the 100-mile drive from Ft. Lauderdale to our home on the Gulf Coast. I planned to pick it up at the airport, drive it across the state, and return it to our local Hertz location, a ten-minute drive from our house.
A few days before we docked, I received a text from Hertz announcing it was time to check in, so I could skip the line, go right to my car, show my ID, and drive out.
If I wanted to skip the line at the counter, which I did, Hertz needed me to text photos of the front and back of my driver’s license. When we cruise, we don’t need cash or credit cards; everything we buy aboard the ship is charged to our account. So we leave our wallets, passports, cash, and other valuables in our cabin’s safe.
I opened the safe, removed the license from my wallet, took the photos, and sent them to Hertz.
Yesterday we took a taxi from the port to the Hertz lot. En route, Hertz sent a text with the number of the parking space where I’d find the car. All I then had to do was show my ID to an attendant as I drove out the exit gate.
When I got to the gate and opened my wallet, my license was… gone. My first thought was that it must have fallen out of my wallet and been left in the safe, but Judy said she had made sure the safe was empty.
She pointed out I had taken money from my wallet to pay the cab driver and the license must have fallen out then. That made sense, but naturally, we had no idea how to reach the driver.
I then decided it must be in the backpack I carry whenever we travel. It has no less than 30 zippered compartments, and I usually spend at least an hour every day on every vacation zipping and unzipping, looking for something I’ve stashed in one of them. (A friend with whom we traveled to France a few years ago recently presented me with a child’s backpack made of clear plastic in the hopes that, on future travels, I’d be able to spend more time enjoying myself rather than searching through my backpack.)
The Hertz gate attendant was kind. She couldn’t allow me to drive out of the holding area, but said that Judy—if she had a driver’s license and a credit card of her own—could have the rental transferred to her name and drive us to our destination. We parked the car, went to the Hertz counter, and stood in line for 45 minutes, giving me time to look through my backpack more thoroughly.
When we explained what had happened, the Hertz agent was understanding. He said his wife had lost her purse a few days ago for the second time in as many months. As he handed over the new rental agreement, his eyes met my wife’s and they smiled sadly at each other.
As Judy drove across Alligator Alley, I took everything out of the backpack: two laptops, my Kindle, earbuds, five charging cables and adapters, a paperback, a water bottle, candy, pens, notepads, printouts of our itinerary, packaged snacks, two pairs of reading glasses, one of those seven-compartment plastic thingies marked with the days of the week for pills, a bottle of Advil, a toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, shaving cream, a razor, a comb, loose Band-Aids in all sizes, a pair of socks, and four pairs of those cheap wiry headphones flight attendants hand out on planes when you’ve forgotten to bring your own. But the license wasn’t there.
Listening to an oldies-but-goodies station, we laughed when the Beatles’ “I’m a Loser” started playing. I asked AI how to replace a Florida driver’s license. (Easy. You can apply for a replacement online and can even get it the same day if you’re willing to stand in line at Motor Vehicles.) Judy said she wouldn’t be surprised to find that, after taking the photos, I’d stashed the license in a pocket. “You do that all the time,” she said. She also said it was a good thing I still had my insurance cards and Mastercard, so I wouldn’t have to call the issuer to cancel it.
That’s when I realized my AmEx and bank ATM cards were missing, too. But I didn’t tell her. I didn’t want her, in a fit of rage, to drive the car into an overpass to put both of us out of our misery.
When we got home, I emptied my suitcase and went through the pockets of all my clothes—even the ones I didn’t wear. No license.
I decided to go through the backpack one last time before I called the credit card companies and applied for a replacement license.
Lo and behold, I found the license in one of the eight side compartments I had somehow failed to unzip. Not only was the license there, so were the missing credit cards.
My theory is that our cabin attendant found them on the bed, sofa, desk, or floor. Wanting to be sure I didn’t lose them, she must have stuck them in the backpack, which I’d left in the closet, and forgot to let me know. I surely didn’t stash them in that damn backpack. No way I’d ever do that.
After lunch, I suggested we return the car to Hertz. Judy would need to pick me up in her car after I dropped it off. I said I’d leave a few minutes before she did so I could stop at a gas station, return the car with a full tank, and avoid the fuel surcharge.
When she arrived at the Hertz lot after I had checked the car in, I didn’t tell her that when I had reached for my wallet at the gas station pump, I realized I’d left it at home. The car was returned half full, and I—Judy actually, it was her credit card—will probably be charged a gazillion dollars a gallon for Hertz to fill it up.
From Hertz, we drove to the kennel where our dogs had spent the last 12 days. Russell and Rupert were as happy to be reunited with us as we were with them. The clerk charged their stay—which cost fully one-third as much as we had spent for a luxury cruise—to the credit card I had presented when we checked them in. That was merciful because I think Judy might have gone ballistic if I’d had to produce a physical card and would have had to admit I’d left my wallet on the kitchen counter.
As we were leaving the parking lot, the attendant came running after us.
I’d left my sunglasses on the counter. I thanked her profusely.
Funny thing is, I don’t really need them.
I found the sunglasses I’d lost in the backpack, too.
