Ten dollars
Jul. 6th, 2005 05:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pjthompsonStrange event of the day: So I'm in the cafeteria and a guy says, "I think you dropped your money." I look down and there's a severely wadded up bill on the ground, so wadded I couldn't even see the denomination. I'm pretty sure it isn't mine because my money is neatly folded in my pocket, but I pick it up, of course. I unfurl it and wow! It's a ten dollar bill. I check my pocket and my own ten is still there. "This isn't yours?" I ask the guy. "No." "It isn't mine, either." He laughs and looks a little disappointed. "It is now." He turns and walks away, as if wishing he hadn't been a nice guy and had grabbed it himself.
"Wow, found money!" I think, but immediately afterwards, as always happens these days when I find money, I think about a time I lost $15 that I desperately needed—it was all the money I had for the week. And I think about how desolate I was and I remember that finding money is a good thing, but always predicated on a bad thing happening to someone else. That always takes the glee off the moment. What if the person who lost that ten needed it as much as I needed that $15 way back when?
As it happens, I could really use that ten myself, so I'm trying not to be too big of a nerd about this and enjoy my good fortune. But I do think it's important to think of the other guy, too—in a karmically balancingly kind of way.
Irony of the day: Today is the birthday of the President of the United States and of Nancy Reagan. It is also the birthday of my friend, Lynn, who hates Bush with the heat of a thousand bonfires and likes Nancy only somewhat better. "What kind of weird cosmic projection is that all about?" she wonders.
Other irony of the day: This has been a point of much hilarity to all of us who know Lynn. This morning when NPR mentioned it was Dubya's birthday I laughed and said, "Ha ha! And Lynn's. Oh sh*t! I forgot to mail her birthday card!"
I don't share a birthday with anyone infamous, that I know of: Tommy LaSorda, Scott Baio, and Elizabeth Bear. Oh, and of course Bilbo and Frodo Baggins.
Cliché du jour: gore-encrusted claws (Don't worry, it didn't even survive the sub-first draft.)
Darling du jour: n/a - Nothing really floated in my moat.
Typo of note: his death's group wouldn't loosen
Words of the day: A miraculous (for me) 1250—the push to finish chapter 23. And ah, it's finished.
Socks of the day: Dark green with little white dots.
"Wow, found money!" I think, but immediately afterwards, as always happens these days when I find money, I think about a time I lost $15 that I desperately needed—it was all the money I had for the week. And I think about how desolate I was and I remember that finding money is a good thing, but always predicated on a bad thing happening to someone else. That always takes the glee off the moment. What if the person who lost that ten needed it as much as I needed that $15 way back when?
As it happens, I could really use that ten myself, so I'm trying not to be too big of a nerd about this and enjoy my good fortune. But I do think it's important to think of the other guy, too—in a karmically balancingly kind of way.
Irony of the day: Today is the birthday of the President of the United States and of Nancy Reagan. It is also the birthday of my friend, Lynn, who hates Bush with the heat of a thousand bonfires and likes Nancy only somewhat better. "What kind of weird cosmic projection is that all about?" she wonders.
Other irony of the day: This has been a point of much hilarity to all of us who know Lynn. This morning when NPR mentioned it was Dubya's birthday I laughed and said, "Ha ha! And Lynn's. Oh sh*t! I forgot to mail her birthday card!"
I don't share a birthday with anyone infamous, that I know of: Tommy LaSorda, Scott Baio, and Elizabeth Bear. Oh, and of course Bilbo and Frodo Baggins.
Cliché du jour: gore-encrusted claws (Don't worry, it didn't even survive the sub-first draft.)
Darling du jour: n/a - Nothing really floated in my moat.
Typo of note: his death's group wouldn't loosen
Words of the day: A miraculous (for me) 1250—the push to finish chapter 23. And ah, it's finished.
Socks of the day: Dark green with little white dots.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-06 07:10 pm (UTC)I look down, pick up this folded book of bills, see that the outside ones are all twenties. I look around, holding it out to the people around me and get that fixed stare like "Can I? No, better not," and I look down and see my daughter's enormous eyes, so I do the Right Thing and tell the hot dog stand tender, "Excuse me, I found this big wad of money right here. Has anyone tried reported it lost?"
The attendant said no, and I swear I didn't see her do anything--but within seconds several enormous guys in subdued polo shirts and FBI slacks materialize out of thin air, I tell the story, they take the money, thank me gravely, and that's that.
If I'd been alone? I probably would have considered it a windfall and kept it, once I'd checked with the people around me. But not with those eyes watching.
The child fell asleep the second she hit her car seat, and as we inched out of the parking lot the spouse said, "You know those security goons latched onto it." I had to agree. Yet.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-06 10:02 pm (UTC)btw I've been meanting to tell you, I like your metrics. they're all chaotic and interesting.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-07 09:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-07 09:48 am (UTC)