Clipper Card Caper

Bay Area residents will recognize that name “Clipper card,” that convenient way to travel by bus, streetcar, BART, boats. They might also feel my dismay when I went to get mine out of my wallet—and it wasn’t there! Just as the bus was pulling up! I did cobble together enough cash to get on the bus but was so baffled by my card’s absence. Where could it have gone? I had just used it yesterday and yes, sometimes I take it out of my wallet and put it in my pants pocket to have available to exit a station. But then usually eventually return it to the wallet. 

 

So returning home, I checked all pockets from the clothes I wore the day before when I last used it and lo and behold, it was nowhere! So in the midst of an otherwise lovely day, I kept obsessing about it. Where the hell was that damned card?!

 

Then felt a little sheepish that in the midst of some of the worst moments in American history I can remember in my seven decades of citizenship, I’m getting so upset about a damn bus card? Really? In the world of small things, this problem is one of the smaller ones as the card is pretty easy to replace and stop payment. What’s wrong with me?

 

I think it has to do with the expectation that things are in their proper place, that you can find them where you put them, that when (or if) you do find them, there would have been a logical explanation. In short, I’ve lived with the notion that life makes sense, that even when it’s at its most chaotic, there’s usually an unseen and previously un-understood pattern behind it all. 

So in fact, the tiny act of losing that Clipper card is pretty similar to the larger issue of my country completely off-kilter. Where did we misplace our Democracy? Why isn’t it where we expected it to be? And especially for this coming-of-age in the 60’s guy convinced that we were going to make the world a more loving, peaceful, just and beautiful place, what the hell happened that Nixon suddenly seems not-so-bad? It’s maddening! And this will not be as easy to fix as calling Clipper, stopping payment on the old card and getting a new one in the mail.

 

So my obsession about that card is related to the needed obsession with our lost Democracy, but clearly the latter needs our full attention. 

 

Still though, where can that dang Clipper card be?……………