Lost and Replaced

Several days after I was laid off in August I lost my MedicAlert bracelet. It was my own fault. The clasp had been faulty for ages and I’d put off getting it repaired. It was an upgrade to the first bracelet I got back in 1997, when I first needed to wear one of those suckers.

My original bracelet was one of the standard stainless steel numbers with red enamel lettering. When the enamel began to chip, I had to stop wearing it (my job at the time made it necessary that I not leave little flecks of red paint behind in the product). I treated myself to a 10kt gold replacement: hardly top of the line, but still on the outer edges of what I could afford at the time. This was the bracelet I lost last summer.

I went to the MedicAlert site to get another bracelet and blanched when I saw the price of the 10kt model. I had just lost my job, so I was braced to downgrade my bracelet back to stainless steel but the price had gone up so dramatically on the gold that I realized there was no chance I’d ever see my lost bracelet again, even if it was found. I ordered an inexpensive new stainless steel bracelet.

(A few weeks later I received a mailing for a sale of MedicAlert jewelry and ordered a “dog tag” style necklace as well for about ten bucks. Wearing a MedicAlert bracelet had made it difficult for to wear the nice jewelry bracelets that I owned; my watch on the other wrist ruled out the alternative arm option for wrist adornment.)

When I got home today there was a packet from MedicAlert. It included the following letter:

Dear Ms. Salamander: Good News! A kind person found your MedicAlert Emblem and returned it to us. We are returning it to you with our compliments.

Not only had they returned it to me with their compliments, but they’d replaced the broken clasp with a new, functioning lobster claw clasp!

So thank you, Nice Person, whoever you are. May the good deed you’ve done for me come back to visit you tenfold. You’ve made a Salamander very happy today.

And for those of you reading this, if you’ve ever taken an item to Lost and Found, or turned it in to Human Resources, or chased after the person who you just saw drop it, thank you too. You made somebody out there very happy, and they’re probably wishing a tenfold return of fortune to you as well. And if they aren’t, I am.

A Happy Salamander