Saturday night Mrs. Cranky and I attended the wedding of a close friend’s daughter.  The events were held in two of the area’s nicer venues … the wedding ceremony atop The Water Works facility on the Schuylkill River; the reception across the Delaware River at the Camden’s Adventure Aquarium. 

Both venues were new experiences for me, which made both memorable.  The reception at the aquarium was very well done for the most part, especially if you like the idea of cocktails in the shark tunnel.  Eating with the carnivores – even if it’s only appetizers and hors’ devours – was a trip!

Unfortunately, the Camden waterfront was alive with another kind of species that night … teens and young adults attending hip-hop artist, Drake‘s concert at the Susquehanna Center.  I only say “unfortunately” because the Drake event was letting out just as the wedding was concluding.  There’s nothing like waiting in traffic for an hour, then taking a midnight tour of Camden after leaving a wedding reception! 

As we reached our car for the hour-and-a-half trip that normally takes 40 minutes, I spied a recognizable shape laying on the ground near the rear wheel.  Someone had lost their wallet.  Immediately – as only a parent of several young adults could – I made a mental bet with myself that this was not the wallet of one of the wedding attendees.

Bullseye!

The wayward billfold revealed the owner to be a 19-year-old Philadelphia resident and student at St. John’s University.  After rifling through it looking for identification (wink, wink), contact information (none), and worthy plunder ($30 in cash including a $2 bill and two Dunkin Donuts gift cards were not worth sullying my impeccable reputation over.), I tossed it in the car and resolved to leave it go until the next day when I wouldn’t be cussing up a storm at bottlenecked traffic, GPS confusion, and ineffective spousal efforts to get me calmed down.  Damn you, Drake!!

After a Sunday morning perusing the paper and intaking copious amounts of coffee, I turned to contacting the now walletless owner.  After a shocking inability to find St. John on Facebook (Isn’t EVERYONE under the age of 40 on Facebook?!?), I turned to the on-line version of the Philadelphia White Pages.  Ten minutes later, I had found my quarry.

After a quick noontime phone call, where I smiled to myself as St. John’s dad asked the age-old question, “Where the HELL is your wallet?!?”, St. John’s sheepishly thanked me, had my cell number and address (I had to trust him, right?), and a plan to head to my house immediately to recapture his lost identity and Dunkin coffee credits.

That was until he called me 45 minutes later to let me know they were stopping for BRUNCH on the way!  St. John’s swore it “just came up”.  I sensed a female – or two – might have been involved, but I let it go.  I had no big plans, aside from another trip to the cell phone store to becalm my electronic-annoyed spou … (Nah, that would just get me in trouble.)

 My lone condition in a situation like this is that The Losee has to expend the overwhelming bulk of effort to regain his lost and found property.  It was fortunate – for St. John – that I had no other plans that day, or he would have been tracking me all week-long throughout the Mont-Phil region, playing catchup to my active, vivacious lifestyle. 

OK … It wouldn’t have been all THAT difficult … or vivacious.  Sad, but true …

Anyways around 3:00 PM (about three hours after our phone conversation) St. John’s knocked at the door, funky-colored baseball cap on backwards.  He was an amiable kid, respectful and truly relieved to have reclaimed his personal stuff (and not for the first time, he intimated).  He made no offer of reward, which was OK by me (but not so much my father-in-law).  Afterall, he’s a college kid; and I would have refused it anyway, given his young stature.

No, we won’t be hangin’ out anytime.  And there certainly won’t be any Drake concerts together in our future.  But hopefully he learned a few things about personal responsibility (Who am I kidding, really?) and maybe – someday – he’ll pay the good deed forward.

Ya never know …