Dear Sir or Madam,
Most of all, I really hope you enjoyed reading all those fortune cookie fortunes I collected over the years, perhaps while you were waiting in line at Target with my credit card in hand and maybe two dozen sheet sets and a bunch of DVDs on the conveyor belt. You seem like the type to hunt without a license, but just in case, I stuck a blank jackalope hunting license in there just for you! It's been signed by the mayor of Douglas, Wyoming, so just fill in your name and you should be good to go! I also hope that you take the opportunity to drive down to Urbana and eat four more meals at Basil Thai. Your fifth will be free.
Then, while you're lying in front of the fire on your jackalope skin rug, eating fried rice and watching the complete Friends, consider taking a moment to look at the wallet itself. It might not be your style--pink with red poppies on it--and at first I wasn't even sure it was my style, but I bought it in one of my favorite cities in the world and it held everything. It became my style, because it was my wallet and I liked it better than all the other wallets people gave me over the years, the ones that languished in my top drawer (well, aside from the replacement I whipped out yesterday) untouched.
You're mostly welcome to the cash in there, even though I was planning on spending the forty bucks at the grocery store today. Perhaps your need is greater than mine and you have children or nieces and nephews who could use a good meal. That part is fine. What isn't okay is the rest of the money in there, which my mother handed me when I left Kansas on Thursday. She told me to buy myself a nice outfit I could feel good wearing on my first day of work, which is tomorrow.
Now, I don't have the world's largest bank account, but I have enough that, if I wanted, I could go out and buy an outfit today anyway. After all, I left my debit card in my apartment for the first time this year out of some strange, premonitory luck and I have it with me now (in my new, perfectly nice, substandard wallet). It's not the money. Money is money. I have a job and my mom has a job and my dad gets retirement checks. What really bothers me to the point that it makes my skin crawl and my tear ducts fire up is that my mother, who loves me and wanted me to have a good first day at work because I've had a not-bad-but-not-easy year, handed it to me and I took it out of her hands and put it in my wallet and the next hands to take it out were...not mine. I wasn't standing in Express, and my mother's idea was temporarily hijacked by someone she would probably call "sad," "unfortunate," "an interesting adult."
So think of me in line at the DMV tomorrow morning, while I hope against hope that they can get me a new driver's license as quickly as possible so I don't have to call in late on my first day. And think of me the next time you access any of the services available to you as someone who has gotten to the point that you feel you must steal for a living, because somewhere someone is writing grants to keep those services available to you, and they might be doing it with a new (substandard) wallet in their purse.
Enjoy those CVS and Dominick's discounts!
Sincerely,
Nom de Plume
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