All Night Diner

You’ll never feel dumber when you rattle your pockets to see if you have everything before leaving the all night diner at three in the morning and discover in a sickening panic that your wallet is missing, the one with all the credit cards and a huge circular imprint which is not from your lucky half dollar, so you march back to your booth to confront the busboy, but he hasn’t seen it, so you’re like MY WALLET WAS IN MY HANDS LITERALLY JUST A MINUTE AGO! I PAID FOR OUR FOOD WITH A BIG FAT TWENTY FROM OUT OF MY OWN WALLET! AND NOW MY WALLET IS GONE! and people start stretching their necks to catch a glimpse of the loud Asian who is red-faced not only from the five or six Manhattans he’d imbibed at the bar across the street, but because he didn’t want to go to this crappy diner in the first place AND NOW HIS WALLET IS GONE AND NO! ONE! IS! HELPING! and then you single out the oaf nearby who kind of looks like a Down’s Syndrome version of Ja Rule and say YOU TOOK IT, DIDN’T YOU?! YOU SAW MY WALLET LYING ON THE TABLE AFTER I LEFT AND SNATCHED IT, DIDN’T YOU?! and then you realize that he is Shaun Pruitt, a former starting center for the Fighting Illini’s basketball team, so you quickly apologize and turn around, and then you push your demanding index finger into the backpedaling manager’s chest because leaving your name and phone number to him is not good enough — you want to actually see the video surveillance tapes — and when the manager calmly asks you what the wallet looks like, you reply IT’S THE ONE THAT SAYS BAD MOTHERFUCKER, but the manager isn’t amused and asks you to check your pockets again, so you pat your khaki shorts once more — this time, the bottom side pockets that you always forget you have — and find that your wallet has been there all along so you say WHOOPS! SORRY ABOUT THAT! FOUND IT! and start grinning sheepishly as you leave the diner to the applause of the entire restaurant.