Transient Transplant

A few nights ago I met up with a friend at a local haunt of mine called Octopus Bar.  Its ship-themed interior becomes packed with hipsters sporting man buns the later it gets while hip hop plays in the background.  

When I’m there I always find myself wondering if the music choice fits the overall theme of the bar, though I enjoy it thoroughly.  And what are pirates if not gangsters of the sea?

I usually don’t spend too long there though, as it tends to get loud and crowded after a certain hour, causing me to scream, “WHAT?  WHAT?” after everything people say or just nodding along as if I can actually follow whatever conversation is happening.

The boisterous hour was approaching when a man approached the bar and yelled at the bartender “By chance has anyone turned in a wallet?”

I turned to face him, blatantly staring, wondering how you lose an entire wallet, although only about an hour ago I had walked through the door with my ID and then couldn’t find it again for 30 minutes while stone cold sober, just fatigued from a busy week.  So I figured I wouldn’t judge him too harshly from the get go.

The bartender yelled a name at him, something like, “Are you Adrian Smith?”

Adrian Smith’s friends cheered, and he got a big smile on his face.  “Oh my God, that’s me!”

The bartender turned around and presented him with a wallet on a towel, saying, “I found this in the toilet earlier.”

I stared in horror, jaw to the ground, the questions running through my head.

Wouldn’t he know if he dropped a wallet in the toilet?  With the weight missing from his pocket and the audible splash, I would think he would notice such a thing.  How much did he have to be drinking to be past the point of hearing the wallet hit the water?

I myself have accidentally dropped two phones in a toilet in my lifetime.  And believe me when I say the panic overtook me instantly both times when I heard the splash, and I knew something was wrong.

The first time it was a phone casualty while I was working at Macy’s many moons ago.  I tried everything people suggested, including the soaking it in rice trick.

But the Blackberry had drown and could not be revived.  

The second time this happened to me was only a few weeks ago.  

I was home visiting my family in Indiana, and heard the all-too-familiar splash and turned around and grabbed the phone out of the toilet with cat-like reflexes.

I would not lose another phone to a watery tomb.

Luckily it was ok.  I had apparently not learned well enough from my first mistake to take my phone out of my pocket but had learned that the faster I grabbed that sucker out of the toilet bowl, the less likely I’d be coughing up enough money to pay my rent on a new phone.

I am happy to report it is still alive and kicking to this day.

So coming from an experienced place of accidentally dropping important things in toilets, I do speak with some authority when I say you instantly know something is wrong.

Not Adrian Smith though.  That dude had been just hanging with his friends, thinking he got robbed in some pirate bar.

I made zero attempts at acting like I was not watching the drama unfold right before my eyes.

Adrian Smith looked at the bartender, gulped, and said, “Well I really only need the cards out of it.  The wallet is worthless to me. So can you just take those out and then throw the wallet away?”

I audibly gasped.  That bartender had just saved this man’s wallet from the Davy Jones’s Locker of the toilet world, and he had the audacity to ask him to pick out his cards because he was too afraid to get his hands dirty?  After his mistake?

If I was a pirate, that sort of behavior would not fly.  Adrian Smith would be walking the plank for his rude attitude.

The bartender looked him dead in the eyes and said, “I literally had to fish this out of the toilet with my hands.  You can take the whole thing or it can all go in the trash. Your choice.”

I laughed as Adrian sheepishly took the wet wallet, thinking that he wouldn’t be showing his face around these parts anytime soon.  He was far from a maritime gangster.