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GentlewoodFarms
April 8, 2012

The Train I Almost Missed

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Last month, my sister and I made plans to take my mom and one of her friends to the Dallas Botanical Gardens. We planned to take the Amtrack Train from OKC to Ft. Worth, rent a car, and then drive into Dallas. I was super excited - I'd never BEEN on a train before, so it was going to be a real adventure for me!

The outing was planned for the day after my spring scrapbook retreat, so on Sunday night, I didn't even bother unpacking my truck when I got home. I went inside, washed my clothes, went to bed, and then got up at the crack of dawn to head out to my sister's house to make the train by 7am.

I got to Becky's and realized that I did not have my billfold. I panicked! With the increased security surrounding transportation in this country, I knew I would need some form of identification. It was too late to go home, so I called my DH and begged him to find it. I didn't remember taking it in from the truck, but I told him, "it can only be one or two places." He could not find it.

I went back out to my truck and looked again - in all the boxes still packed from retreat, in the crevices between all the boxes, under the seats...everywhere. No billfold. No I.D. No credit card. No nothing. I was having a major meltdown. My tickets had been paid for by my mom who was SO excited to be going on a trip with her two girls - which hasn't happened since we were wee little. I hated to disappoint her but I knew there was no way they would let me board without an i.d.

My sister - who is a world traveler - said, "Come on. We need to go. The worst that can happen is they'll say you can't board in which case you just go home. But think of this as a trial run for Italy."

So - off we headed to the train station - me just sure that there was no way I was going to get on the train. I was going to disappoint my mother, I was going to miss the first train ride of my life, and I was going to look like a complete idiot for showing up at the train station without any identification. Becky explained to the conductor who I was, what the situation was, and I guess I looked so distraught that he realized it had to be the truth, and I will never for the life of me understand it, but he LET ME BOARD. I guess it helped that I had three people standing there with I.D.s vouching for me, two of whom were little old ladies in their 70's.

When I finally sat down and took a deep breath, I had the good sense to realize that this was a real and true scrapbooking moment so I took a photo of the station through the window. I think that Becky was smart to give me the heads up about "trial run" to Italy, but as I continued to review my actions over the last 24 hours, I could not figure out what I could have done differently. I KNEW that I hadn't taken my billfold inside the house because I remembered thinking about locking my truck up because I was leaving everything IN it. I knew that I'd had it the night before because I'd gassed my truck up at the last filling station before my house. I KNEW that it had to be in my vehicle. I just couldn't FIND it. I finally decided that I'd dropped it at the gas station, and called the credit card company to report a lost card. Then I forgot about it. What's done is done.

The next 36 hours without my billfold were uneventful, and when we got back to my sister's house, I opened my truck door and there, inside the door, in the door cubby, was my billfold. I cannot describe the relief I felt when I realized that it wasn't lost. But it was a real hassle waiting the next two weeks for my new card and PIN.

My sister said, "if you pull this stunt again when we go to Italy, I'm disowning you."

Thanks for stopping by, and if you've gotten this far, thanks for sharing my memories with me!


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Submitted to the following Challenges :

1. The Darker Side
2. April Subject Challenge - April Showers
3. Lift Your Faves. I lifted Susans's "Disneyland Railroad" which you can see here:
http://www.scrapbook.com/galleries/11823/view/2813921/-1.html


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