Once, at Panda Express, I was halfway through my broccoli beef as a teenage couple at the next table finished their meal. The guy left his wallet sitting on his tray, and when he dumped the tray into the trash, the wallet went right along with it.
My friend, facing their table, leaned toward me and said quietly, “He just threw his wallet in the trash.”
The couple left the building, but a few minutes later they came rushing back, in a panic. The boy looked under and around the table where they’d been seated, then glanced at the trash can. He shook his head as if denying it was even possible. Not worth checking, he decided. Pride won out. He was not the wallet-in-the-trash type.
Looking back, maybe I should’ve told them. But in the moment, I let fate handle it.
Years later, in 2023, I asked a.i. to recreate the moment and the result left something to be desired. The boy was not actually wearing a panda mask that day.
