Nosy Samaritan

Last night while waiting for the bus I noticed a wallet sitting on the curb. There were other people around, but none of them seemed to be looking for a lost wallet, so I picked it up and took it home. It turned out not to be very interesting: no credit cards, no money, just a Howard University student ID, Blockbuster membership card, Safeway gift card, AAA membership card that expired in 2001, and business cards for a lawyer, a florist, and a mortgage broker... I started to wonder if the guy who lost this wallet would be very excited about getting it back. Maybe I could use his Howard University card to get student discounts and see how often I got called on it--no one really looks at those cards anyway, right? But I found his social security card sandwiched in with all that worthless plastic, and figured he'd miss that eventually.

Then I noticed, turned backward behind the student ID, a driver's license. I was happy to have an address, but closer inspection revealed that not only did the license have a different name on it than everything else in the wallet, but it had expired in 2003. Now here was a mystery: Why was a 31-year-old (according to his student ID) carrying around someone else's expired driver's license, but not one of his own?

Unfortunately I'll never know, since I dropped the wallet off with a security guard at the Howard dorm across the street from my building this morning, and she didn't ask for my name. It occurred to me later that I should have added one of my business cards to Mr. Smith's (his real name) collection. Then if Mr. Smith had taken the hint and called to thank me, I could have plied him for information. Sigh.