Lost and Found

This morning was fairly routine. Woke up to the History Channel (My TV is my alarm), brushed my teeth, ate some yogurt and began my daily email grind. Still very early, a strange phone number pops up in my cell phone.

Somebody had found my wallet laying in the middle of the street right by my house. How it got there, I'll never know. It had to have been there since 7:00 pm last night. No one had paid attention for hours. The man, Bruce Handy:

couldnt find my number in the phone book, and I ran out of business cards actually in my wallet. He found my number on the back of an ancient, faded circuit city receipt. As it turns out, all my cards and money were untouched.

I was awestruck at this turn of events. He could have taken the money, and the cards. He could have just turned it in to the police station, and I might have never gotten it. He could have looked at one less receipt and never found my phone number. I usually give fake phone numbers to merchants who ask, so I don't know why I gave Circuit City my real phone number that particular day, and why I hadn't thrown out that decrepit, year and a half-old receipt.

Here is Bruce's house:

He lives with his father, and suffers from several chronic ailments. Whenever he gets sick, he goes to Forest Park Hospital, which is in my neighborhood (Dogtown). Interestingly enough, he told me that he also ran across a purse in Dogtown, but after looking at it, he put it back where he found it. Why?

It belonged to a white woman. He was deathly afraid that he would be charged with a crime if he had kept the purse and tried to contact the woman. The reason he decided to keep my wallet was because he didn't think I would go to the police.

As a result of these events, I decided to do a random act of kindness today. What it will be, I do not know, but I think every Tuesday might be random act of kindness day for quite a while.