The terror was unparalleled. I stood in the middle of the store battering myself like a man who has stepped on a beehive. I slapped at my back pockets, my front pockets and everything in between. I checked my socks, my hat, my coat. I checked the socks, hat and coat of a nearby stranger, just to be sure.

No go. My wallet wasn’t anywhere to be found.

You just gasped, didn’t you? If you’re a man, you did. Men know the paralyzing horror of losing a wallet. Most of us have been there. Just once, though. A man loses his wallet once and then learns to keep it as close as an organ he needs to live.

Ladies, today is your lucky day. You need not read any further. Just flip the page and read the police log or something. Bet your daughter’s boyfriend is in there again. She really knows how to pick ’em, huh? Unfortunate. A matter for a different day.

It’s the sole agony of men, this business of losing wallets. Sure, women have their purses, pocketbooks and satchels. They have their shoulder bags, crossbody bags, messenger bags. They’ve got their hobos and totes and clutches.

I only know what two of them are and that’s two too many. And that is also my point. Women haul their stuff around in a variety of ways, sometimes changing methods daily as a means of thwarting muggers and scaring away potential mates.

Beautiful enigmas, the lot of you.

A man* has his wallet — a thrice-folded hunk of leather absolutely stuffed beyond full with every single thing he needs to coordinate his life. License, passport, cash, credit card, ATM card, prophylactic, gym membership, three phone numbers, possibly phonies, that he got at Fuel over the weekend. All of that is crammed into one strained pocket at the front of the wallet. The rest of the billfold is filled with the important stuff.

*I realize that these days, some “progressive males” are carrying around bags. They call them attaches or man bags, but let’s be honest here, shall we? Those things are pocketbooks,** nothing more and nothing less.

**Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

At the start of his day, a man stuffs his wallet into a pocket. It can be a front pocket or a back pocket, as long as it’s the same pocket every time. For the duration of his day, no matter what he is doing, he is aware of that comforting bulge and he is reassured that his life is in order. A man is not allowed to touch another man’s wallet. It is kind of uncool to even mention it.

At the end of the day, the wallet is removed from the pocket and placed in its usual spot; a nightstand or a dresser drawer. By the time he is 40 years old, a man will have repeated this process more than 11,000 times. Eleven-thousand times! And yet, I guarantee that every single time he plucked that wallet from his pocket and chucked it into or onto the bureau, he breathed a small sigh of relief. Eleven-thousand sighs of reassurance and gratitude.

A dozen times a day, we check to ensure the wallet is right where it’s supposed to be. We’ve been doing it so long, it’s almost an unconscious gesture — just a quick pat-down to make sure that leather square of comfort hasn’t slipped through a hole or been plucked by a thief. We do it everywhere we go. We do it in the restaurant, the bar, the men’s room, the hotel room where we’ve brought our prostitute.

Or whatever.

Losing a wallet is pandemonium. It’s a time-freezing, sirens-wailing, moan-out-loud kind of crisis. It’s madness. Lose your wallet and you have to call in sick at work. You have to call your entire social circle into an emergency meeting. You need your friends to help you think because the enormity of what has happened has devolved you to the level of a terrified child lost in the woods. It’s hard to think, difficult to remember.

And then one of your friends will say, with complete seriousness: “Think. Where did you lose it?” And you will want to punch that friend repeatedly in the beak, because if you knew where you lost it, would you be here, in the middle of Walmart, curled into a fetal ball and crying like an infant?

Losing a wallet brings complete chaos to your life. You can’t go anywhere because you have no license, no money, no way to prove who you are. You have to call all the credit card companies and try to convince them you are who you are even though you have no idea what your customer ID number might be.

The Bureau of Motor Vehicles? Ha! On a perfectly ordinary day, they make you jump through flaming hoops of dung just to do the simple stuff. Can you imagine what they will demand of you if you go in there without any form of identification whatsoever? They probably have a dungeon in the bowels of the building for people who have lost their wallets. On some nights, if the wind is blowing right, you can hear the wailing from that subterranean hell.

Deep breath, everybody. It hasn’t happened for sure yet. Back at the store, I’m continuing to beat myself down in search of the elusive wallet. Breast pockets, underwear, shoes. To a stranger, it looks like I’m signaling for a double steal on Uranus. I’m one step away from searching in ridiculous places, like inside the refrigerator, the microwave oven, at the bottom of a taco. I’m one step from sounding the alarm.

But wait! With the last vestige of rationality I have left, I remember. The backpack! I’m wearing a backpack and I stuffed the wallet deep down inside it. It’s not the best system — a man likes to keep his wallet where it is in constant contact with the body. But since I was out on the motorcycle today, it seemed like the backpack …

It doesn’t matter. My wallet has been found! Sanity is restored! And better still, this close call will remind me that absolute vigilance is required to ensure that wallet never slips away for real. The average dude will have three close calls like this a year. The universe has designed it this way so we will remain forever mindful of what could happen.

All is well. The crisis has passed. Although, somewhere in the world of hapless males, some poor slob is running around this very moment with a sense of rising terror. His wallet has fled the confines of his pocket and calamity is at hand.

Hold on, my friend. I need you to think. The rest of us are here to help you through this terrible time, but I need to ask you one thing.

Where did you lose it?

Mark LaFlamme is a Sun Journal staff writer. You can console him for almost losing his wallet at [email protected].