22 May 2009
$100 bill
Oct 15th, 2006
For a few years, my younger sister lived in Elgin, Illinois. The first time I visited her there, she took me on a tour of the old brick downtown area, where we randomly discovered an alley that I just loved – an organic tangle of odd angles, patchwork brick, vents, old iron fire escapes … even a decaying old Uncle Sam hat way up in a corner.
One Saturday afternoon in October, Kari and Becky and I decided on a whim to go see my sister for one night- although we knew that we wouldn’t arrive until almost midnight, and would have to drive home again the next day.
It was a lot of driving, and someone always had to sit in the halfcab backseat thing of Kari’s pickup truck – one of those little fold-down seats, the kind it sucks to sit on.
On Sunday we drove around Elgin and went and looked at some antique stores’ “Closed” signs – and wound up back in the alley I’d liked so much before.
I was feeling really positive, in the flow – the day just felt magical and I was surfing it. You can probably get an idea by my face in the photo below – which was taken maybe a minute before I opened up that big iron hatch at the right (behind the upside-down garbage can) – and found, lying on the dead-end concrete steps within, a swirl of yellow “Police Line – Do Not Cross” tape – surrounding a single crisp $100 bill.
in the flow, about to open the hatch
As you can probably imagine, this felt like some kind of dream – it’s not really that much money I know, but seriously …what the heck? And not just that I found it, but that it seemed to make so much sense that I did, when I did … like I was expecting it somehow. Serendipity, synchronicity … call it what you will, it felt great.
So I bought everyone coffee at the nearby coffee shop, and later that afternoon when we went to a tasty Mexican place (Azteca de Oro) to eat, I picked up the tab … it just seemed right to share that lucky found money with my friends.
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Sick
flamoot
May 24th, 2009 at 9:15 pmpermalink
I mean that’s sick, a hundred dollars. Wow
flamoot
May 24th, 2009 at 9:16 pmpermalink
Holy shit, and in police tape too!
Livia
May 25th, 2009 at 9:15 pmpermalink
You stumbled upon a drug drop. Some poor kid probably got his fingers broke because of this!
noise bursts
May 31st, 2009 at 2:09 pmpermalink
lol how cynical! I don’t believe it (fortunately!).
teapotshappen
June 1st, 2009 at 12:03 ampermalink
“Find a hundred dollar bill wow man that’s great … wanna think of things that make you feel that way.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMbYOkU7LyI
teapotshappen
June 16th, 2009 at 9:14 ampermalink
A $100 Bill postscript:
On April 2nd 2011 my friend Jenny – who has been mentioned on here a couple of times, and who I met via synchroncity (see Poison Ivy, Apple Rust/Cedar Galls posts), forwarded me a cheery message, titled “Fw: Hundred Dollar Bill.”
She has never frwded me email before, which makes it even more interesting – that the moment I got the email, on my laptop, I was being handed a hundred dollar bill from my friend Bob.
I literally had it in my hand as the email arrived …. lol
The email had a video of “I Can See Clearly Now” covered by Jimmy Cliff, and said:
A well known speaker started off his seminar by holding up a
$100 bill in a room of 200 people, and asked,
“Who would like this $100 bill?”
Hands started going up.
He said, “I am going to give this $100 bill to one of you,
but first let me do this….”
He proceeded to crumple the $100 up.
He then asked, “Who still wants it?”
Still the hands were up in the air.
“Well”…..he replied,
“What if I do this?”…..and he dropped it on the ground and
started to grind it into the floor with his shoe.
He picked it up, now crumpled and dirty.
“Now who still wants it?” he asked. Hands still shot up!
“My friends, you have all learned a very valuable lesson.
No matter what I did to the money, you still wanted it…because
it did not decrease in value. It was still worth $100.”
Many times in our lives, we are dropped, crumpled, and ground
into the dirt, by the decisions we make, and the circumstances
that come our way.
We feel as though we are worthless. But no matter what has
happened or what will happen, you never lose your value!
Dirty….clean…..crumpled….or finely creased…..
you are still priceless to those who love you.
The worth of our lives comes not in what we do or who we know,
but by WHO WE ARE.
You are special….don’t ever forget it.
Count your blessings………………NOT your problems.
Teapots Happen
May 4th, 2011 at 11:25 ampermalink