Keianna

In the first week of school, my friend gifted me a cat-shaped coin purse that she had bought during a trip to Japan. I quickly made it my go-to wallet. Like most belongings that are very important to me I constantly checked up on it throughout the day, just to make sure it was still in my bag.

I spent the first part of Thanksgiving break at my grandmas’ house. We didn’t do much except watch Law and Order, Criminal Minds, and Blue Bloods. I’m not complaining AT ALL because those are my favorite shows, but on Tuesday I decided it was time to venture out of the house and see some friends. We skated (they skated, I fell off a skateboard a couple of times), shopped a little, and went for lunch. It was a really great day and the last thing we wanted to go do before I left to run errands with my grandma was go to the thrift shop.

This is the part in my story where my little coin purse and I part ways. It must have happened while I was trying on a pair of brand new shoes that would soon be the the peak of my thrifting career. As I pulled off my bag to check I had enough cash, I noticed that it was already unzipped. I figured I had just left it open by mistake, but ran a quick inventory of the contents of my bag just in case:
My jacket? Check
My camera? Check
My wallet?
My first instinct was to run as fast as I could to have an employee open the dressing room door. It had to be there. Everything was taking too long. Ignoring caution and running on adrenaline I knocked on the door of the dressing room to make sure no one was in there before I shimmed under the door. It wasn’t there. It wasn’t ANYWHERE in the store.

By this point, I had been anxiously looking around the store for 10 minutes and my grandma had just walked it. Through my tears I told her what happened and waited for the scolding that didn’t come. She was gentle as she talked to the employees and kept her cool as we took the short bus trip to the bank to freeze my debit card.

“There’s nothing we can do about it. This is your first adult problem.”

She said a lot of other things to reassure me but those two phrases really stuck with me. There was no way I could go back in time and stop someone from stealing my wallet while I was distracted. I could blame myself and dwell on it all I wanted, but I’d done all I could.

This was my “first adult problem.” So there’s more? It’s a common thing for adults to tell you that things only get harder when you complain about seemingly insignificant problems. That has often bothered me a lot, because I figured that they were just overdramatizing adult life. Oh ignorance, my old friend, please take me back! Maybe I’ll start carrying around stickers with words of encouragement to give to myself and my peers whenever we encounter an adult-sized hurdle.

Oh, and if anyone happens to be stopping by Japan in the next couple of days, can you pick me up a coin purse? ♦