Good Bye Old Friend

Goodbye old friend we hardly knew ye. I'm not talking about a person I am talking about my old wallet, or as it was refereed to "The Giant Wallet". It has been a good friend over the years. It has held pictures of love ones, held my cash and credit cards and many small slips of paper with telephone number on them from people that I don't know any more. My wife bought this wallet for me, it was a Marino Oriandi with a zipper that closed it up. It was made of beautiful fine leather, but there was one thing about the wallet that was both good and bad. It was about 1 inch bigger all around than any other wallet that I have ever seen. The good part about that is that is held a lot of crap. The bad part, for me, is that I had a hell of a time getting it out of my pants pocket. The good side to that is it saved me a lot of money when we had gone out to dinner. When it came time to pay the check it was always the person who could grab their wallet and put down the cash or credit card the fastest. With the giant wallet it was not a easy thing to extract my wallet from my pocket, so I was never the the fastest.

But the wallet ,beside saving me money over the years it also was a embarrassment as well. One example of this took place on the New Jersey Turnpike. When I was working I would take the turnpike home ever day after work. Usually what I did was to take the toll money out before I got to the toll so I could get home as quick as possible. But there was this one time where I pulled up to the toll and I had to get my giant wallet out to pay. As the toll taker extended his hand to except the toll I tyred to get my giant wallet out of my back pocket. Well I just couldn't do it . I tyred and tyred for maybe 45 seconds, which seemed to me to be hours. I kept struggling and struggling all the while the toll taker is looking at me like I am some kind of mental patient. It was like I was wrestling with myself, and I was losing. I finally had to take my seat belt off and climb out of the car take the giant wallet out of my pocket and pay the toll while 50 cars were backed up behind me. I tyred to make light of the situation but the toll taker just looked at me with pity and this little half smile that indicated to me that he had his story for the day to tell his buddy's about. "Yea, you should have seen this knucklehead with a this giant wallet today".

I am going to miss the giant wallet it has been a friend for along time. Now with my new wallet I probably have to pick up the check a couple of times . Dam it!