Found Money

Dear George, 

Yesterday Iko and I took Katja to the Blue Ash Nail Salon to get her nails done.  As we took our walk around the strip mall parking lot, what did I run across on the ground but a twenty dollar bill.  Needless to say, this made my day.  I don’t plan to spend the twenty dollars, at least not in the near future.  Rather I added it to my collection of “found money” that I keep under a magnet on my file cabinet. 

For many years I’ve collected a lot of paper ephemera: antique postcards, old photos, prayer cards, rock and roll promotion photos, calendar pics, greeting cards, etc.  My favorite collection, though, is paper money.  I got interested in pursuing this from my son J when he was 5 or 6 years old.  We usually went as a family to do our grocery shopping at Keller’s Market, and, each time we left the store, J showed me the money that he’d found on the floor,  He never failed to find some cash.  Sometimes just a single coin, but more often two or three or four.  J said that he found all that money because he was just a kid and consequently closer to the floor than were the adults.  Eventually I figured out that he was finding the money by crawling underneath the checkout counter where the cashiers didn’t bother picking up dropped change until the end of the day.  In any case, J taught me that it was a good idea to keep an eye on the ground because you never know what you’ll come up with.  That was 45 years ago, and I’ve been keeping my eye out for money ever since.  Here is what my collection looks like to date:  

Twenty dollar bills, of course, are exciting.  My best find, though, is the two dollar bill at the middle of the array.  If you set out with the goal of finding a two dollar bill on the street, I think it would take you at least a hundred years.  Probably more like five hundred or a thousand.   Generally, finding lost money is not a project that is conducive to intentional action.  It would be very frustrating if you set out in the morning to find some money on the ground (mainly because it takes forever).  Although I’m very pleased with my collection.  my best estimate is that I’ve found one bill about every one or two years at best.  Give my long-term efforts, I have seventy-five dollars so far.  My aim is to reach a hundred dollars.  Then I will give the money to my grandchildren as a present (which hopefully they will use to start their own collections).  However, I’d better start walking about two or three times as much as I currently do if I have any hope of reaching this goal.

Love,

Dave