It happened at the butcher. I went to pull out my debit card and pay for my delicious grass-fed beef and...my wallet wouldn't unzip. It opened this far:
But no more.
I struggled gamely with the zipper as the hipster at the till waited patiently for me to get my bourgeois shit together. Beads of sweat broke out on my forehead.
"Ha ha...I can't seem to get this unzipped! I never have this problem with my pants!" I joked to him. He did not laugh.
Desperate, I reached into the small opening left by the zipper and tried to jimmy my debit card out of the side. The hipster began to touch his sausages as I scrabbled and tore at my stupid fucking indestructible wallet. Finally, just as the babe in line behind me started to tap her Fluevogs impatiently, I managed to extract my debit card and pay for my meat.
"Ha ha...maybe time to get a new wallet," said the guy behind the counter as he handed over my receipt. I wanted to grab his sausages and squeeze real hard, but instead I laughed as if that was funny because his beef is insanely good and I want to go back there.
I've had this wallet since 2005, when I stole it from another shopper at the College Park Winners. In December 2010, Katr bought me a new wallet, because she is thoughtful and also, was tired of how important receipts always seemed to disappear into my George Costanza wallet. I TRIED to switch to the new wallet, but couldn't. Because when it comes to wallets, I am a hoarder.
But, the other day at the butcher, like most hoarders, I hit rock bottom. And I had no choice. It was time to say goodbye to my old wallet.
Here's all the stuff that was in it:
It turns out I was carrying:
- Paper money
- 2 pounds of coinage, mostly pennies
- My expired learner's permit from Ontario that I still use as photo ID
- My BC health card
- My medical insurance card from two insurers ago
- My current medical insurance card
- My hospital card from Grey Nuns in Edmonton, which I have not been to since the 1990s, when I was 17 and I was with my brother and they thought I was my brother's mom. He was 14 at the time.
- My 4 debit cards
- 6 AirMiles coupons for 1L of dill pickles
- My friend Hildy's business card (from the night we photographed the skunk!)
- A "sorry we screwed the pooch" free drink coupon from Starbuck's that I've been hanging on to since 2006 - JUST IN CASE
- 15 very dog-eared gas station receipts, one of which was JUST FOR ICE CREAM, no gas. One of them was from 2009.
I also had a few loyalty cards. Just a few. These are just the plastic ones. (Loyalty card sidenote: The only loyalty card I DON'T have is a Shoppers Optimum card, which I REFUSE to get because the government is using it to spy on me when I buy Metamucil. But apparently I do trust Safeway, Air Miles or Petro-Points not to sell my information to the Feds.) I also had several cardboard punch cards for a yarn store that moved to Abbotsford last year (not somewhere I visit often):
These are what tripped me up the last time, honestly - because while the new wallet has room for SOME of my loyalty cards for American stores I only shop at once every three years, it doesn't have room for ALL of them. SEE? It's SO SLIM AND STREAMLINED!
AAAAAAAAAARGH!!!
It was a long, arduous process, trying to decide which cards deserved slots, which I could reasonably expect to not use in the course of every day shopping and which I always WISHED I had on me when I unexpectedly ended up at the fat girl store or a certain grocery store or the gas station.
Many agonizing minutes later, the exchange was complete. And I had a new wallet.
Here's the finished product:
Like the good hoarder shows, I promise I'll do a follow up post in a few months to see if my currently pristine wallet has been stuffed full of fluffy crap. I'm sure the Ativan will help.
