It was a sunny day, and I suddenly wanted to leave home and go somewhere. A senior friend who lives in Leonia invited me to her house. I got on bus 166 to New Jersey at the 42nd Street terminal and looked out the window. It felt like going on a picnic.
After passing through the Lincoln Tunnel, I saw hills on the right side.
That was Weehawken, the site of the famous duel in the musical Hamilton. On July 11, 1804, the first Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, lost a duel against Vice President Aaron Burr and died the next day. I suddenly thought,
"What if we gave today’s fighting politicians one pistol each and let them duel like people did 200 years ago?"
We tell kids to get along, but adults are always fighting. Why is that?
My friend had prepared a big table full of food—roast beef, radish kimchi, stuffed cucumbers, water kimchi, japchae, stir-fried anchovies, various vegetables, pancakes, and soybean paste stew. We ate well and talked. I left around 9 p.m.
We sat on a bench at the bus stop and kept talking while waiting for the bus. After about 15 minutes, the bus came. I waved my hand to stop it, but it drove past me, then stopped a little further down. The driver said that at night, you have to shine a flashlight for the bus to stop.
I took out cash to pay and sat on the right side in the middle of the bus, holding my wallet in my hand. But the seat didn’t feel comfortable, so I moved to the opposite side. A man who had been watching me since I got on suddenly stood up and moved to the seat I had just left. Then, right away, he got off the bus. At that moment, I realized—something was wrong.
I looked in my handbag. My wallet was gone. I searched the floor under the seats but couldn’t find it. I think I must have placed the wallet on my lap, and when I changed seats, it fell. That man probably picked it up and quickly left the bus.
If the weather hadn’t been good, If I hadn’t gone to Leonia, If I hadn’t run to catch that bus, If I had put the wallet inside my handbag, If I hadn’t changed seats—maybe I wouldn’t have lost it.
I wished I could turn back time. But in the end, it was my mistake for not being more careful. Even if we try to be cautious, sometimes everything lines up just wrong and the worst happens.
Ten days later, I received a thick yellow envelope with five 50-cent stamps. It was from New Jersey. There was a note inside that said someone found my wallet on the bus. Only the cash was missing—everything else was still there. I was really thankful.
That night, I thought about how to express my thanks. The next morning, I drew a small card with my hands pressed together in a gesture of gratitude. On the back, I wrote a long thank-you letter and sent it.
Who could it be? What kind of person would return my wallet so carefully? I searched the name and address on Google. A photo came up. Unless my eyes were wrong, it was the same man I saw when I got on the bus. He had stared at me so closely that I even looked back, wondering if I knew him. It was that man.
No—it can’t be. That’s impossible. I must be imagining things. Why am I thinking so strangely, like the sun rising in the west? I started feeling annoyed with myself.
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