Unprepared

I was at work and was leaving to be picked up and taken to an after-school event for my son. Since I had a ride, I decided to leave my purse at my desk at the office so I wouldn't have to carry it around.

I walked a ways to a local shopping center where I waited and waited over an hour for the ride from the friend to take me to my son but it never came. I even saw other people I knew but didn't ask to ride with them because I didn't want my ride to arrive and find me gone, which would have been rude. I eventually realized it wasn't coming and everyone else I knew had left long ago, so I went inside a local business and borrowed their phone to call a cab. The cab dispatcher kept me on the phone for an hour, telling me the rules and how the ride would work, and one of the rules was that he would need his payment immediately when I arrived. Then I remembered I didn't have my purse, and the office was now closed and locked and my key to the office was in my purse, so I canceled the cab.

We recently canceled our home telephone number to save money since we always use our cell phones anyway, but it took several minutes and several tries to remember my husband's cell phone number (usually I just selected his name from my cell phone contacts) so I could ask him to come get me. He was very put-out, since he would have to cancel some long-held plans, and it would take him an hour and a half to get to me, then to drive to where our son was, and then two hours to get home.

I wandered around the shopping center while I was waiting for him and then realized I didn't tell him where to pick me up at the mall, and I had no cell phone for him to call and ask once he got there, so likely he would never even find me.

I was cut off from my family, my son was abandoned (unless someone had taken pity on him), and, because I had left my purse at work, I was completely unprepared for the turn of events.

I felt hopeless, and wandered aimlessly around the shopping mall for days and days, hungry, cold, homeless.