12.20.2004 - 12:52 p.m.

I have one of those brains that has trouble holding on to things like meeting times, birth dates, and whether my purse has been left in a public place. The musical instrument most likely to show up in a crossword puzzle, or the names of animals I was friends with when I was eleven, or the number of books in Isaac Asimov�s Foundation series, these things I will know for the rest of my natural life, but not the others. I am not sure how my brain prioritizes informational bits, to leave me with results like this.

This morning, despite a nearly irrepressible desire to call in �sick,� I stood in stinging, blowing snow to clean my car off, slid my way out of the parking lot, made a mental note to fill the trunk with cat litter before coming home, and remembered that I couldn�t.

I am not expecting to accomplish anything at all today. How could I? As far as most systems in the world are concerned, I do not exist. I have no ID. In fact my entire purpose today is to sit here in this office and hope my purse will come walking in that door on some good Samaritan�s arm, or magically appear on the doorknob after a pee break.

I am not holding my breath. I lost it here, where everyone knows how to figure out an email address from the name on a driver�s license. My cell phone number is written on the inside flap of my little writing book. My home address is in the corner of my checks. No one has emailed or called or stopped by.

Can�t finish the Christmas shopping until the new credit cards get here. (There was no improper activity on the old ones. Does this mean it wasn�t a thief, or that they just took the identity, and plan to play with it later?) Can�t access my checking account until I get a new license. Can�t see the doctor without the insurance card. Don�t exist. Don�t exist.

I still have this fantasy of calling the boyfriend to say I found it, of going through it to see that everything is there, of having a coworker come in later today apologizing because the roads were so bad, but she picked it up on Friday afternoon, couldn't find me, and just now had the chance to bring it back. But I'm not holding my breath. It is gone.

Still, I just wish want my nice wallet back, and the license I renewed last week, and my good writing pen and the forty-four pages I�d filled in my travel journal, and I want to never forget anything, ever again.

-stonebridge

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