Korman: Wallets tempt downfall of human race

It was somewhere in the two-block stretch between Bates Street and Fifth Avenue. That’s… It was somewhere in the two-block stretch between Bates Street and Fifth Avenue. That’s where I lost my wallet.

I had noted its absence from its usual pocket somewhere along Coltart Avenue, but didn’t concern the matter much — the hour was late, I had barely walked two blocks and I figured I’d simply left it at my point of departure. I was sure I’d retrieve it the next day.

In the morning, I conducted a thorough search of my friends’ living room, but to no avail. I then checked the establishment at which I had last used my debit card.

The next stop was Panther Central — I needed a new Pitt ID since I had bought a student ticket for a Pitt football game. This proved problematic because Panther Cards cost $20 to renew, and I, of course, was functionally broke.

I would have to head to the bank, explain my situation to the teller, report my lost debit card and withdraw the necessary funds. Naturally, the on-campus PNC branch was closed, as was the next-closest branch at Fifth Avenue and Craig Street.

Telefact was my last hope. The representative informed me that I had a half-hour to make it to a PNC branch on the West End before it too closed.

However, my lack of a Pitt ID stripped me of the free bus-riding privileges this institution so graciously offers me, and I didn’t even have $2.25 to pay the layman’s fare.

My journey was over. Not only would I have to watch the game from home, but I’d also have to apply for a new New York state driver’s license, report my debit card as lost, apply for a new one and also deal with whatever havoc my wallet’s new owner had decided to wreak on my bank account. To make matters worse, I was just two punches away from a free six-inch on my Subway Club Card.

I didn’t bother tuning in when game time rolled around because I already knew what the score was: World 1, Ben 0.

After a week of contemplation, I now blame the debacle on the flawed model of the wallet itself. If I had simply kept one item apart from the others, this whole situation could have been avoided.

Indeed, the wallet has risen to its current prevalence due to convenience: If we keep all our things in the same place, we don’t have to fumble around for them.

The flipside is the colossal risk. In idiomatic terms, the wallet “puts all our eggs in one basket.”

Yet over the course of evolutionary history, several species of birds have gone extinct because they, quite literally, put too many eggs in one basket — predators ruin a particularly large batch in one fell swoop. The risk herein roughly approximates to that of the wallet. By keeping so many important items in the same place, we tempt disaster.

Homosapiens, on the other hand, have benefited immensely from more conservative management of our young because, A — we usually just have one “egg” in our “baskets,” and B — our “baskets” just happen to be inside our uteri.

Thus, the concept of the wallet disregards one of the primary factors behind our rise as the most dominant species on Earth.

Even historically, putting all our important stuff in the same place has netted some downright nasty results.

The Stock Market Crash of 1929 and ensuing depression, the incapacitation of millions when Gmail went down, the financial ruin of Bernie Madoff’s victims and the natural security risks incurred when several prominent world leaders are nestled within the same municipality — a la last year’s G-20 here in the Steel city — are all testaments to the fact that we should abolish the wallet.

I realize I cast a broad shadow with this argument. Granted, the wallet does have its advantages. Consider that when the Pitt police ultimately returned it to me — it had somehow escaped my pocket on Coltart and was rescued by an “anonymous motorist” — there are not one but two forms of photo identification in which my face has been outfitted with a curly mustache, a monocle and a top hat.

Here, at the very most, the wallet’s consolidation factor may have indirectly given me a legitimate excuse to actually grow a curly mustache, wear a monocle and don a good ol’ Lincoln hat — and yes, this might sound awesome on the surface.

But this is trivial compared to the dangers we face by keeping all our important stuff in the same place. If we wanted to avoid repeating our past mistakes, we’d keep our cash in one pocket, our driver’s licenses in another, our Panther Cards in our armpits and our Subway Club Cards in our uteri.

E-mail Ben at bek25@pitt.edu.