Connections: A Happy Ending
Things lost and found have been on my mind ever since April 17, when my purse disappeared at Guild Hall’s John Drew Theater. I told the story of that mystery on this page two weeks ago — and had no intention of revisiting it, until, on Sunday night at 11, we were surprised to hear the phone ring.
A young man at a rehearsal for “The Night Alive,” a play running for five performances at John Drew, between last night and May 22, was calling to say he had found my bag with everything intact! Whew.
Theatergoers had been in and out of the John Drew in droves over the last few weeks, but the purse, shoved between a seat in the third row and an armrest, had apparently been hiding there all along, virtually invisible. Members of the Guild Hall staff and I had gone through the theater with all the lights on four times, to no avail. There was nothing to be seen until my caller walked along the row where I had been seated and jiggled one of the seats.
I’d said all along that it was rather doubtful the purse had been stolen; after all, how many purse-pilferers are likely to have been in attendance at a Sunday-afternoon Q and A with Guild Hall’s artists in residence? But I had called the police nevertheless the night it went missing, to fill out a report and be on the safe side. When there was no news of it in the next few days, I did what had to be done: I canceled my credit cards, appealed to the Social Security Administration for a new Medicare card and to AARP for medical and prescription drug cards, drove to the Honda dealership in Riverhead for a new ignition key, and weathered a boring queue at the Department of Motor Vehicles to obtain a new copy of my driver’s license.
Given all the things one hears about the D.M.V., even that part of the saga was relatively pain-free (thanks, largely, to the helpfulness of the police officer who took the report and who provided me with the forms in advance). The silver lining is that I now have two sets of car keys and two driver’s licenses. My old Medicare card had been illegible anyway. And I also now have back the keychain holding East Hampton Town’s 350th anniversary medal, a favorite memento.
At any rate, because I have been discussing things lost and found lately, this seems a reasonable place to mention the nine simple metal forks and six spoons I recently discovered in my kitchen. I don’t recognize them at all. I’ve put them in a small plastic bin in a kitchen drawer that holds other random utensils. I have no idea where they came from.
We’ve all heard of teenagers on sprees breaking into houses to help themselves to the liquor cabinet and perhaps a snack, but as unlikely as Guild Hall purse-pilferers may be, silverware-depositing housebreakers are unlikelier still. We haven’t had a catered affair here since the mid-1990s, so it’s not that.
The grandchildren may have dropped a plastic spoon or fork around the house when they were finished with an ice cream at one time or other, but this is more than just a couple of forks and spoons: It’s practically a full dinner service. We maintain a small kitchen at the Star office, so perhaps I’ll bring them down to the office tomorrow and deposit them in a drawer, or . . . I wonder if the crew needs cutlery at Guild Hall?