How old? For starters, here’s a version from the “My Favorite Jokes” section of Parade magazine, 3 September 1972, as told by comic Gus Christie:
This is supposed to be a true story. A man, we’ll call him Mr. Jones, is riding to work on the subway in New York City and there’s a guy who keeps bumping into him. After a while Jones gets apprehensive and thinks, “This can’t be what I think it is!” He checks his wallet — and it’s gone. “That’s it! Nine o’clock in the morning and I get mugged in the subway. Things are really getting bad.” He grabs the guy, shakes him hard, and says, “All right, cough up, give me that wallet!” The guy is petrified and he hands over a wallet. So Jones goes off to work and when he gets to his office his wife calls and says, “Honey, you left your wallet on the bureau this morning.”
