my friend michael posted today about accidentally leaving his laptop bag on a bench in seattle and having it returned to him by some college students. his story brought back memories of the summer i was 21, interning at travel & leisure magazine in new york city. i lived in a studio apartment on the upper east side with my sister, and often walked from midtown home to save the couple of dollars in bus fare.
one day, i stopped by a photography shop to pick up some photos i had dropped off for development (wow that ages me!). i was excited to see the pictures, so sat down on a bench next to a bank to flip through the images. ten minutes later, i got up and walked off, leaving my handbag alone in the middle of manhattan.
when i got to the apartment my sister and i shared, she was home and the door was open, so i sauntered in, completely ignorant of the fact that i didn't have my wallet, or my keys, or my work id, or my driver's license or really anything of value i happened to have with me that summer. we had dinner, had a drink and were chatting away several hours later when the phone rang and someone asked for me.
some amazing women had found my purse not long after i left it, and had spent over an hour tracking me down. it wasn't an easy feat considering i possessed a kansas driver's license and had nothing in my bag to show i actually lived in manhattan. in the end they found me by calling a new york phone number on a scrap of paper in the bag. it was the phone for a friend of mine, who helped them get ahold of me. they were concerned i would be worried sick about my bag, which i would have been if i had realized it was missing. they hand delivered the handbag to my door half an hour later, with a smile and no interest in any kind of reward.
sometimes it's easy to forget that there are a lot of people out there who are like mike's seattle college kids and my lesbian couple in new york city--people who are honest and caring and generally just pretty cool.
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