This is a story from just a couple months ago. I was in Panama and had gone out for the evening with a friend of mine. We had dinner, then went for some drinks, then went to an apartment in Paitilla where several of the her friends were having a little party. Well, at about 3:00 a.m., we left in a taxi. The taxi dropped her off at her house in El Dorado, and then the taxi driver was going to take me to my buddy Ben's apartment where I was staying for the night. I was about half-way to Ben's place when I realized I didn't have my wallet.
I had the wallet earlier in the night when we went for dinner and drinks, so I thought it must have fallen out of my pocket back in the Paitilla apartment. I asked the taxi driver to take me back to to the party. Well, the wallet wasn't there. I now had 2 immediate problems: First, I didn't know how I was going to get back to Ben's apartment, because I didn't have money for a taxi. That leads to the second problem - I had a taxi driver waiting for me downstairs who expected to be paid for driving the girl home and then taking me all the way back to the Paitilla party.
I asked the people at the party if someone could "loan" me a few dollars to pay the taxi driver. I managed to find one guy who gave me $5. I went downstairs and asked the taxi driver how much I owed him - $8 he says. My reply was, "Well, all I have is $5." The taxi driver called me an "awebao" (read "dumbass") and squealed his tires as he sped away. It is interesting how squealing your tires is an international way of saying "I feel very angry with you". Anyway, as the taxi sped away, I knew that one of my problems was now gone.
Then I started trying to think of how I could get back to Ben's apartment, which was several miles away. It is now about 4:00 a.m. I thought about calling Ben, but I didn't want to wake him up in the middle of the night. I had recently broken things off completely with my ex-girlfriend in Panama, and Ben was already doing me a favor by letting me stay with him. Plus, I knew I might have to ask him for money the next day so that I could go to the bank to cancel my cards, figure out a way to access some cash, etc. I wanted to keep my favors down to 1 at a time.
I searched my pockets for change, and here is what I found: Before my ex-girlfriend and I cut things off, she had handed me a U$S 1 bill that was torn in half. This was not anything symbolic - it was just to find some tape to put it back together. Well, I never taped the dollar bill together. Apparently I had been wearing the same jeans that day, because here in my pocket was a single dollar bill torn in half. U$S 1 was not going to get me very far, and the fact that it was torn in half just made it painfully ironic. It was 4:00 a.m., and I was stuck.
So I started walking. I walked for what seemed like an eternity - it was actually less than 2 hours. I even walked across the bridge where my ex-girlfriend and I had been robbed a few years before. This time, though, I was alone and it was 4:30 in the morning. I finally made it back to Ben's place, and the next morning I was able to cancel my cards, re-activate an existing bank account that I had in Panama, and ask my parents to wire me some money to get by until my new cards came in.
I never found out what happened to my wallet. I think it must have fallen out of my pocket in the taxi ride after dinner and drinks. I now use a money clip.
