Core Philosophy

Sometimes the glass is half full. Sometimes it's half empty. Sometimes the stupid thing is all the way empty, has a hole in the bottom and is made of uncoated tissue paper.

Consider the last few days. I was with the fam at Silver Dollar City, having a wonderful time. It was hot, sure, but there was plenty of lemonade and water to drink and fine misting fans at periodic intervals. And of course, we had the kids with us, and they have a tendancy to whine if things aren't spot on perfect, but we aren't new at this and so we pursued the policy of hanging in there and identifying lots of "teaching moments" while still enjoying the park. No problem, right? Manageable. Doable. Under control.

Until Friday morning.

Until 11 a.m., Central Standard Time, when I lost Monte's wallet with all our money, credit cards, season passes, IDs and the very first social security card he was ever issued, inside. He and the boys decided to beat the heat by going on a "soak ya through" water ride, so I put the wallet and his cell phone in my stretchy lightweight shallow pocketed workout capris and set off with Peyton for some quality sitting time. The only thing we did was buy a lemonade, locate a shady spot and sit in one place. That's it. I had the wallet when I bought the lemonade, but when I walked up the hill to meet Monte, I didn't have it anymore. I did everything one might do in that kind of stressful situation. I retraced my steps. I looked everywhere I had been. I asked vendors, people in the vicinity and the lost and found ladies if they had seen the wallet. I teared up. I panicked. And then, having no other options, I left the park with my family.

The first thing we did was cancel the credit card and debit card. Then we decided we needed IDs, which led us to drive an hour and a half acorss the Oklahoma border to the nearest tag agent, to get our driver's licenses replaced. Through the marvels of modern technology, the state of Oklahoma can replace your license with no other form of ID because they have your index fingerprints on file, and a scanner in every office. That's the good news. Unfortunately, what they can't do, is reprint the license using the picture you already took.

The picture you took when you were well rested, had on makeup, had your roots freshly done and hadn't just lost your husband's wallet.

The picture that didn't show someone who had been sweating in a theme park and then crying in a mini-van for three hours.

No sir. They take a brand new picture. A current picture. A picture of the right then and now.

So to make matters somewhere between worse and unbearable, I now have a government issued memento of one of the worst days of my life that I am, for the next six years, required to show clerks, ticket agents, policemen, anyone I need to prove my identity to. And I'm sure once they've seen it, they'll look at me and all ask the same thing.

"My goodness, what on earth happened here??!!"

Epilogue: They found the wallet at SDC, with the money in it and everything, the next day. It was Baptist days, so we probably have some nice Baptist to thank for being honest and giving us our life back, not to mention the license with the better picture. Also, one might say we were fortunate to have lost the wallet on a Friday when the tag agent was open, and that we were close enough to their location to get there during business hours and replace our IDs with no other proof of identity than our index fingers. Oh yeah, and cancelling the credit and debit cards were probably a good thing too, because both accounts been open for a long time with the same numbers and were probably more prone to identity theft than the newly issued cards.

Still.

Worst vacation ever.

How's that for how empty the glass is?