Lost and found
It was already evening. A quick flip of the wrist and the Samsung screen lit up, displaying the numbers 17:54. “Let’s go already!” Alice shouted from a little way ahead. Bossy as usual. I quickly caught up, and asked if she’d ever been to the bank by bike before. “No, but I know the way,” she replied. I checked the front pocket of my hoodie. Camera, check. (Why did I even bother? She’d never allow me the time to talk to Greg about homework…) Envelope, check. Checks in envelope, check. Four of them in total. Almost sixteen hundred dollars right there. I made a mental note to check and adjust it regularly on the way to the bank.
“Are we there yet?” It had been almost 10 minutes now, and the bank was nowhere in sight. Apparently we’d taken a wrong turn a few minutes ago, according to a pedestrian we asked. Crap. My muscles were beginning to tire, and the Chicago wind didn’t help. It was good exercise though, and I left the gears just as they were. Low. Up till now, I’d been checking the contents of my hoodie pouch, and I quickly did so now. All there.
After another 5 minutes of biking, we saw the familiar Walgreens and other signs that indicated we’d arrived at the outskirts of Chinatown. Whoever designed Chinatown’s roads was an idiot. I never realized before, how annoying those slanting roads and pedestrian crossings could be. We looked across at the opposite side of the street and saw a ‘walk’ signal light up, and began to cross… but turns out that signal wasn’t for us, it was for the crossing perpendicular to ours. Because they were placed so close to each other, we could see both and didn’t know which was which. Stupid signals! We got to the halfway point between the two directions of traffic, but not without some blaring of horns. It’s worse with a bike, because its so bulky. Double damn the designer! Finally, we arrived at the gates of citibank. We walked in, and… I discovered that my envelope wasn’t there anymore.
Unbelievable. Where WAS it? WHERE WAS IT?? I was almost panicking. The wind probably blew it right out. It was a terrible misjudgement to think that it would stay in the hoodie pouch. I even searched her bag (i was carrying it on the bike), in case it miraculously dropped inside or something. Nope. Again. Still nothing. The third seach yielded the same result. I was prepared to tear out my hair by this time. Alice suggested backtracking to find where it’d dropped. I was sceptical of the success of this, but at least it was a try. After she’d finished with her stuff, we got on our bikes again and backtracked. I knew it couldn’t have been far off, because the last time I checked it, we were close to Chinatown.
Imagine the joy I felt when we saw an innocent white envelope on the ground near a particularly sharp turn we’d had to make earlier on. Yes, it was mine! Unharmed, too! Amazing.
The rest of the night ended without much interest, and that’s my story for the day.
Heart Drizzle 