I thought I had had my purse stolen yesterday. The orange patent-leather 60's purse I got from Leo's grandma, Edna. With my wallet (bad enough) and my keys (worse!).

I took the girls down to the beach yesterday after school because we are having some of the lowest tides of the year right now. And because, well, we're having unseasonably
warm weather this week and it was not unpleasant to run around barefoot in the sand for a couple of hours. Anyway, I just left everything in the stroller and headed down to the beach. I didn't really think about it one way or the other. I won't say I haven't knowingly left my wallet out like that in the past. Generally, I assume that people are good and that there's a limit to how much badness one should plan for. Though usually, I do try to leave my wallet out of the equation and just stick a couple bucks and my keys in my pocket. But I had run a few errands before picking Zoe up at school and headed straight to the beach, so I just left everything piled in the stroller.

After the sun set and we shoved home, I arrived on my doorstep with no key. Tracked down the spare key to let myself and the girls in, called Leo, called the police... wondered if I should go back down to the beach (again with both kids in the stroller as I didn't have my keys) in the dark, to ask if anyone has seen it, in hopes that someone would have taken the small amount of cash and the credit card and left the rest of the stuff. Especially the bag. And the keys. Since my ID was in it, someone then could find the house and car with no problem and there was nothing I could do to stop them. I had all kinds of "bad guy" paranoia.

After fretting and pacing for a while, I checked my answering machine. It was Carl from the Starbuck's. He had my bag and looked up my number and called me. It must have fallen from the stroller when I was fetching a bagel to sustain us on the way to the beach. Someone had handed it in.

Faith in humanity once again restored. See? People are good.