For the third time in less than a month, I navigated through the telephone menus of the American Express customer service line. Despite the pleasant experience of the voice recognition system that understood my English, I was frantic, yet slightly assured that I was in good hands.

Because of stupidity or theft, I didn’t think to cancel my credit cards immediately. And about a week later, I was surprised to receive a fraud alert from AMEX. Like Tina Fey in her commercials, it was a comfortable experience. I was immediately given assurance and told steps to take. I cancelled all my credit and atm cards and had them re-issued. It was uncomplicated and I got my cards slowly over the next few weeks while I survived on cash.

Then two days ago, I looked at my current statements ready for my monthly payment. And I didn’t recognize five charges. Impossible. How could this company charge me during the period when I didn’t have a credit card? I called the company and asked for information. My account didn’t even exist there. Did I even visit that site? My information—my social and credit card information—was not even there. How was that possible? After some more fishy talk, I called American Express and had the charges stopped. The customer service representative was calming and assured me that it was ok.

Then tonight after I was credited back the charges I saw another charge. $20 at fandango??? At Loews? I immediately called Chris and looked at my history on Foursquare (thank god for my OCD in self-tracking). As suspected, I have never paid for tickets since Chris often find good deals on coupons and the movie passes that we have amassed over the years. And if I did use Fandango, he would have insisted on using the Visa Signature deal. And also I have hesitation about buying movie tickets anyway.

This whole ordeal—that one moment in the DC Circulator bus. It was that single moment. I don’t know if my wallet fell out of my bag or if someone was able to cleverly put their hand into my bag and feel for that leathery touch as I walked by. And yet they returned the wallet an hour later to a bus driver. My friends told me at the time that nobody would have taken my credit cards—don’t worry, they said, nobody had the time to take your credit cards. Oh I wish I was more paranoid then and took precautions than to suffer the surprises that have hit me day by day.

Although the part I don’t understand…how could someone make charges when I had not activated the card yet?