I Found This Twenty-Dollar Bill

Here’s what I did with it. What would you do?

I’m walking my dogs and cross the street. I spot green in the middle of the intersection. I reach to pick up the twenty. I look around me for likely candidates. There’s a woman halfway down the sidewalk and I run towards her.

“Did you just drop a twenty-dollar bill?” I shout.

“No,” she yells back.

This is my lucky day.

But my momentary lottery is crushed by two thoughts.

The poor person who lost their money.

And my mother, who has been gone nearly thirty years.

The former because during my divorce while struggling financially, I lost cash twice. I had gone to the bank, then lunch, and two hundred dollars was stolen from my purse. I had foolishly walked away from my table while at the restaurant. Another time, I somehow lost forty dollars.

The latter because I can hear my mom. “Colleen, did you do the right thing?”

She might be gone, but her principles were alive and kicking within me.

The rest of the way home, good angel and bad angel are screaming from shoulder to shoulder. I should have left it in the street. No, someone else would have just picked it up. I’m being silly, just spend it, guilt-free. No, that’s not right, benefiting from another’s loss. Go into Starbucks and pay for the next few people’s coffee.

I’m being absurd. No one else would give it this much thought.

Don’t question the universe.

This is a great sign. Good things are a-coming. My Joel Osteen-esque prayers of financial abundance are being answered. Good morning to me! Start the day with a chunk of change.

But either my mother or my Irish Catholic guilt gets the best of me.

I post a pic and crowdsource an answer on Facebook.

The responses begin to flood in.

While I’m making my big bucks decision, I canvas my three boys.

They all say they would’ve looked for the owner and felt bad that someone lost money. This is a motherhood score! Far greater than some discarded dough. Because I have successfully passed along my mom’s morally yielding voice.

Then they chuckle a bit at my indecisive dilemma.

“Mom, you didn’t find $10,000,” says one of them.

Okay, point well taken. Perhaps my attack of conscience is overblown. I’ll wait for my Facebook buddies to free me. I read the responses and they are in unison. Either donate it or do a version of the pay it forward beverage concept.

All of this heavy right and wrong scrutiny of scruples has me hungry.

I walk to a nearby restaurant to grab a bite and do some writing.

A beautiful, sweet, young server goes overboard with my coffee refills, veggie burger delivery, and conversation. She’s hardworking and the kinda happy that passes her happy along.

She places the bill on my table.

I reach in my pocket for the twenty and give it to her.

Her face alternates with surprise and smile.

I tell her nothing of how I’ve discovered this complicated coin.

Less, I ruin the four times larger than twenty percent tip. She doesn’t need to feel sorry for someone or hear her mother’s voice at work.

She doesn’t need to know how she won this sweepstake.

Or that this bill was ever lost.

Only that it found the person it was looking for.