The Lost and Found ~GBE2 #3

Hiya! This is my 3rd blog done for a group called the GBE2 .  It's an informal group of bloggers, each week on Sunday we are given a word or phrase, a suggestion.  Then it is up to each blogger to take that trigger and go with it.  Short, long, serious, silly, poetic...  It doesn't matter.  A lot of the fun is seeing where each blogger takes it. The group is located on facebook and is a closed group but if you ask to join you will be accepted. So go ask by clicking here.

I am all sorts of excited about this weeks GBE, because I made the topic suggestion.  Yay!  Thanks for choosing it Beth.  It's lost and found.

Here goes!

My name is Jill. I am the coat check girl at the Crimson Glade Country Club. I've worked here since I was sixteen. I am now three weeks shy of turning twenty. Almost four years and I bet you I could count on my fingers the number of members who actually know my name. Or even have made genuine eye contact with me for that matter. To them I am invisible. No worries though. I can handle it.


I take their coats, bags, umbrellas, sometimes packages and I make a big deal out of matching paper tag to paper slip before handing it over. You see if I don't make a big deal about checking to make sure they match, some members, mostly the ones who see themselves as The Elite, get a little anxious. As if I will toss their stuff in a big pile and forget who's designer wrap belongs to who. Whatever. Well that and the fact that it gets me tips.

They live high on the hog and I am stuck here part time, minimum wage with zero benefits. Meaning insurance benefits. There are other kinds of benefits here.

One, the biggest one, is the lost and found.

I'm a good girl. I swear to you I am a good girl. I don't do drugs. I rarely drink. I've only gone all the way three times and one of those doesn't really count (I think). Anyway, ummm... Well my paycheck doesn't really keep up with my expenses. I have to pay mom (yeah I said mom) rent money. I have to pay insurance and gas for the hunk of junk car I drive. Seriously people it's 2011 and I am driving a 1986 Ford Escort! The car is older than ME! Ugh. So anyway, I also have to pay for part of school and all of my social life. There's where the trouble started.

But seriously the stuff these people leave behind... What's a girl to do when there is a diamond bracelet sitting in the lost and found cabinet for over three weeks? That was the first thing I "found." It was hard to take. Not physically hard. I have full authorization over the cabinet and it's content. Hell no one else who works there even cares about it. They just bring the stuff to me and I put it away to wait and see if any one will claim it. The hard part was just doing it. Morals and all that ya know. I honestly didn't mean to keep it. But still that first time even borrowing was hard and scary.

I had a dinner to go to, it was more uppity than my normal crowd. I wanted something special to wear. I splurged on kick ass heels to go with a white and blue maxi dress I had borrowed from my bestie. But all my jewelry looked cheesey, mostly because it was cheesey. I wanted, no needed to make an impression. And that bracelet was the real deal. Gorgeous and perfect.

So after a few days of wrestling with my inner girl wonder. I decided it would be ok as long as I took it back. So the night before my dinner I was scheduled to work closing. Perfect. As I cleaned the coat room and all that happy horse shit I made sure I needed to put something IN the lost and found. Then while placing the imaginary lost item in I casually dropped that bracelet into my pocket. Whoa! It felt like stealing. But I was going to bring it back. I was!

It felt like a brick in my pocket as I walked out of the building and across the employee parking lot. I hopped in my car and practically tore up the asphalt as I jerked the car into gear and headed home.

I ran to my room, slowly sat down on the bed, grabbed the lap top and told Bridget, my bestie, what I'd done. She was stoked. Weird. I thought she'd yell at me. But she wanted to come over and see it. I said ok. Then laid back on the bed and waited. I couldn't bring myself to pull it out of my pocket. But it didn't seem so heavy now.

So anyway Bridge was completely stoked and fired up. She loved it and wished I could keep it. But no that would be stealing. I was just borrowing. She said nope not stealing "finding."

That word stuck in my mind.

The dinner was a success. I didn't feel out of place at all. I placed the success of it on the bracelet. I know that was stupid but having something of "class" felt good and gave me to confidence to hold my head up and feel as if I fit in.

Until the ride home. My stupid car coughed a few times and died. Right there in the middle of the road. One hundred and seventy-five dollars to have it towed, I had to ask Mom for the money. Then the mechanic informed me the next day that it was going to be upwards of three hundred to get it fixed. AUGH! Seriously!? The car wasn't worth that much, but I couldn't afford a different one.

Mom couldn't help me, she'd already paid for the tow! I was stuck. Bridge was the one who suggested selling the bracelet. Holy crap! Selling it? No way. Oh my God! We did it. On eBay. Six hundred ninety-nine dollars!

I got my car fixed and gave Mom a little money each week in repayment for the tow. I couldn't give it to her all at once. She'd wonder where it came from.

That was it I was done no more "finding" anything. I sweated buckets each time someone came to my counter to ask about something they'd lost. But no one ever asked about the bracelet.

And slowly I quit worrying about it.

Then someone brought in a beautiful scarf. After it sat in the cabinet for a few weeks I found that too.

Then I needed money for school books. Can someone tell me why a book I am going to use maybe five times has to cost $300? So I found a few other items that were sale worthy.

It was getting easy to find things. Too easy.

Bridge celebrated each time with me. She made it feel like something good. Like we were rescuing these lost items and giving them purpose again.

I didn't even feel bad at all anymore. I even flat out told a man once that nope no one had turned in a gold watch. I did it straight faced with no stammering or sweating. I didn't feel at all bad. That watch looked good on my new boyfriend. Who incidentally I had met at that uppity dinner a few months ago.

Then came the kicker. I had left a pair of Oakley sunglasses at a coffee shop. I knew I had left them there. KNEW IT. But when I went back to ask, the kid behind the counter said nope, no one turned any sunglasses in. So when I saw the kid at the mall a few days later with my Oakleys propped on top of his head I wanted to flip out.

But I didn't.

I had bought those Oakleys with money "found" in a wallet that had been turned in.

I haven't "found" anything since that day. I think now I've found what had really been lost.