For a young boy, many things have a weight that you may not expect. Things can have a value that may seem strange to the rest of the world, but to a child can be a foundation that we build our lives off of. As a child, my financial life began the day I got my first wallet. That day I truly felt like I belonged in the world ─ the wallet represented some stability and responsibility that I saw in my mother and father. I carried it with me at all times for years and I feel like it helped me through tough times at school, church or in my backyard. Anytime I felt uncomfortable, it was always easily accessible in my front pants pocket or in my backpack, and all I had to do to return normalcy to my small world was to reach out and stroke the slightly notched surface of the plastic exterior.
My mother was sitting quietly at the kitchen table with a bottle of diet coke on the day that I received my wallet in the mail. I burst in through the front door of my one story, suburban home after being released from school for the day and a long journey on the large yellow eyesore ─ needless to say I was not interested in games. My mother knew what was coming and was well prepared. I flew into the kitchen where I knew she would be sitting and yelled the same question I had been asking after school for five weeks: “Did my package come today?” Looking back, I do not think that the decibel level that I used on those long afternoons were the best thing for my voice and my mother’s ears, but if you told me that then I would have simply asked in a manner that was louder than necessary “what is a decibel?” As the last syllable of my question rolled off of my tongue, my mother had her response ready and uttered a short “No,” and my heart felt like it shrank just a bit, like it had every day for the last few weeks. I had ordered a wallet covered with characters from the new Disney/Pixar film “A Bug’s Life” from a specially marked box of Captain Crunch. The day that I finished the fourth and final box of the sugary breakfast cereal, I glowed with pride and imagination as I wondered what it would be like to hold my new prize in hand. I watched my father fill the envelope with the order form and four of the carefully clipped “proofs of purchase” and he even let me lick the stamp before he told me he would run it to the post office the next morning.
After my mother gave me the bad news, I slowly dragged my feet to my room in a morose manner, when I heard her call back and say “Wait, this couldn’t be the package that you were talking about could it?” My ears immediately perked up like a cat on the prowl and I ran back into the kitchen in the same style that I had done a few minutes ago with hope restored in my soul. I yelled “What package are you talking about?” and my mother lifted her newspaper that had been lying on the table to reveal a small book-sized brown package. I jumped to grab it but she beat me to it and was quick to read aloud the name written on the label: Charles Cole, my father. I was vexed at my mother for calling me in again only to dash my dreams to ribbons for the second time in one afternoon. She said calmly with a slight smile “Now wait a minute, wouldn’t it be your father’s name on the package? He filled out the form and sent it off, so this may still be your package.” My eyes widened and my heart flickered as she handed me the package. I tore into it immediately like a curious young lion given permission to eat for the first time. My hopes grew every second and when I saw the Disney Company logo underneath the brown papery skin of the package, I knew that victory was mine. I slowly lifted the brand new wallet out of the now valueless paper shell that I had just loved for a brief moment, and held my new blue treasure like it was a gift from God.
For the rest of that afternoon, and for the next several weeks in truth, I spent as much time as possible with my new wallet in hand. I would treat it with great care as I rotated it around in my hands before my eyes ─ always at arm’s length at first, then I would bring it within inches of my eyes and nose, so that no minute detail could escape me. The shell of the wallet was made of a clear layer of plastic that was finely notched so that it made a sweet zipping sound when you ran your fingernails over it. The function of this outer layer was to create a three-dimensional effect out of the inner layer, which depicted the major protagonist and antagonist from the film displaying clever expressions with their backs to each other. The final and innermost layer of the exterior lay below the image of the “Bug’s Life” characters, and resembled what I always thought looked like a subtle combination of a wasp’s nest and a basketball net that wrapped around all of the surfaces of the wallet. There was magic in these layers: when you pushed your finger against any point of the surface, the outermost layer compressed inward and caused the lower layers of the wallet to appear to grow immensely in a masterful 3D spectacle.
My wallet quickly became my favorite object and I kept it with me at all times, no matter if it had a coupon to Burger King in it or a couple quarters that I found on the playground. For me at that age, just having the wallet was good enough ─ filling it was unnecessary. One cold afternoon in November about two months after I had received my wallet, I visited my neighbor’s house to play basketball. This young man was possibly the only boy at my school that was louder, faster and more rapid than me. His physical and verbal pace was too fast for three out of four adults. On the basketball court he pestered me like a coffee-drinking hummingbird until he smacked the ball into the street over and over until we were both too tired to care. We sat down on a couple of logs in his yard and I pulled out my empty wallet to look at out of habit ─ my friend’s face betrayed his desire immediately. He stared in silence at my blue prize for only a short moment before he demanded to hold it. I turned him down without delay and shunned his sweaty palms with a quick rotation of my upper body while cradling in the treasure to my chest like a sleeping child. He had the subtle air of southern politeness in his voice when he screamed in my ear “Lemme see!” I tried to be as calm as possible when I shouted “No way!” right back into his ear. He resumed his hummingbird tactics and began to jab and grab, using every tool in his arsenal of annoyance to make his out of what was mine. After my best attempts to dodge and parry his advances, he eventually grasped the smooth blue treasure and ripped it from my clutches. My friend had a look of satisfaction in his eyes as he held up the wallet to his face and repeated the same rituals that I had done one thousand times before. Each second he held my wallet away from me felt like a stab in the back and I needed to get it back through any means possible. I knew that if I chased him for it, he would undoubtedly outrun me, so I stood still and executed the meanest and most outraged yell that I could muster. He had the stunned look of a deer in headlights as he carefully handed the wallet back and sat down on the logs with a puzzled look on his face.
I ran home exasperated by my friend’s behavior ─ I never exploded like that over anything. Despite its emptiness, I knew I had to defend my most prized possession at all costs. It was my anchor, and as long as that square outline rested in my front pocket, I knew that all was right in my small world.
I kept my wallet with me every day for many years; cards, coupons and cash all coming and going at their own pace as the wallet aged with me. Eventually, the plastic began to erode from the corners and the surfaces became rough and scratched, distorting the spectacular three-dimensional effect. At the age of twelve I made the cheerless decision to put the wallet aside and get a new one, although I knew in my heart it would never be able to replace the wonder that my first magnificent wallet possessed. I chose a simple Batman wallet from K-Mart, and although I knew it was adequately cool, it was nothing compared to the “Bug’s Life” 3D masterpiece that had represented me so well as a person for years.
With each wallet succession after that, my wallets became less of the forms of self expression that they used to be, and became more of an impersonal tool that I had to carry to keep order to my money and identification. The designs lost their fervor and were replaced by the simplicity of solid colors, usually black or brown, leather or thick fabric. I was betraying my childhood by skipping over the wallets with Mickey Mouse depicted on the surface and examining the modern, jet black piece of leatherwork that I needed to carry with me for the next few years. Never in adulthood will my wallet be empty and the small bulge in my back pocket is no more an aspect of personal freedom than a neck-tie tied tightly around my throat.
