I believe that everything has a story. Some stories are trivial and some are not. I suspect that one can’t tell if the story is big or small by the item though. Money is an example.
Yesterday I found a five dollar bill on the ground. It was wet and dirty but there is no way of telling how long it has been on the ground or how it got there. It may be that someone lost it and never knew it was missing. Perhaps they had plenty of money and losing was lost in the noise as it were. But on the other hand perhaps to the person who lost it losing it mattered a good deal. Could it have meant the difference between a good meal and no meal at all? Could it have meant that they ran out of gas on the way home? There are all sorts of ways where losing $5 could be a big deal to someone.
I also found a dime yesterday. Now a dime is a whole lot less valuable than a five spot so it probably didn’t change anyone’s life. But I’ll bet if one really thought about it one could make up a good story about it.
So I found $5.10 yesterday. The dime is going into my change fund but I’m not sure about the five. Spend it – on something fun or on regular expenses? Or put save it for something? Tough questions. What do you do with found money?
What do you do with found money?
I don’t really find money that often, and when I do it’s usually a nickel or something that’s barely worth picking up.
That said, if I found a $5, I’d probably donate it in some way. Here I could stick it in my wallet until I went into Boston next and completely confuse someone homeless by giving it to them, in lieu of the usual pathetic spare change thing. Lacking that, there are a zillion donation boxes for charities.
There was one time when I was nine that I found $20 on the side of a candy vendor’s booth at a baseball game, and like any normal nine year old kid with new money in a candy shop went up to the vendor as asked if anyone had lost any money. That’s right, I was raised with morals.
Later in the day the woman did come asking for her money and even though my mother and I had already left, we drove back and gave the woman her money. And for all you people that think that must have filled me with the glorious sense of doing the right thing; you would be wrong. A ton of pixy sticks and a nice big hotdog would have felt a lot better.
Alas, I’m apparently too nice and all too aware of what money could mean to someone that doesn’t have any.