Forget all this twaddle about people going broke and losing their homes and living in tents and not having enough money to buy milk and bread and Tall skim frappuccinos.
If you just look around, like open up empty boxes left in a corner of your office hallway, you too can be rich!
I have always been fascinated by the phenomenon of money being lost. Misplaced. Forgotten. And we're not talking a tenspot.
For example: in 2009, the New York Times reported (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/26/us/26cash.html) that a little box was left on the counter at a car dealership in Orlando filled with $40,000 in cash. The box was small and unassuming, unmarked, unlabeled, unnamed, containing a mix of old and new bills, none of it “dirty”. Cash. $40,000. That someone “left” there, the assumption being (since no one there could recall threatening to break someone’s kneecaps if they didn’t “pay up”) it was left “accidentally”.
So my question is: how the hell does someone put $40K in a box (in a box?), take it somewhere for whatever reason, whether it’s on its way somewhere else or not, and then, like a $12 pair of sunglasses or a $3 New York umbrella, leave it on a counter? Forget about it?
When I go to Duane Reade for a pack of gum, occasionally I drop a quarter on the way from my hand to the clerk’s. When that happens, all commerce stops for 10 minutes, while I hunt for it in among the Snickers bars under the counter. I enlist the help of the salesperson who is apologetic and equally concerned, and sometimes someone in the line behind me will join in the search. This is for a quarter. I am slightly less anxious about dimes and nickels, but I will take a moment for those as well. Pennies? Eh.
But $40,000 in cash? That I would not walk away from. Not only would I push the Snickers bars out of the way but I would tear open the counter with my bare hands, knocking People Magazines and Chapstick out of the way, clawing and scratching like a terrier until I found that cash.
Forget about the ridiculousness of having that much cash on hand, and the equal insanity of putting it in a cardboard box; how could you just leave it somewhere, because, why? You got a really important text message from your spouse about picking the kid up from school? Did an old flame friend you on Facebook? Did you get a raise or get fired? WHAT could distract you enough to forget about your $40,000??
I guess it wouldn’t have come to this - a post - if it weren’t for the frequency with which this happens. Why work for a living when, in April of 2008, you could find $140,000 (in cash) on a street in Cerritos California, tied up in bundles of twenties? Left (again, “left”) by a Brinks truck on its way to make a deposit (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/04/09/state/n113337D59.DTL&tsp=1).
Or the more modest $10,000 left in December of 2008, on a grocery store bathroom in Federal Way, Washington, by someone who was moving (http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=230943)? Hey it’s not $140K; maybe some people would leave it holding out for the bigger payout, but, you know, it’s better than a quarter.
Or what about one of my favorites: the $97,000 that was found in another bathroom (it pays to hang out in bathrooms despite the experience of some Republicans), this one a Cracker Barrel in Tennessee (http://www.blinkx.com/video/lady-finds-97-000-in-a-cracker-barrel-bathroom-and-gives-it-back/ONajwyt8uqhyH1SHcCvsVw) in the SAME MONTH as the $10K was left in that Washington water closet? (Proving I suppose that absent-mindedness occurs at every latitude and longitude…)
The $97 grand was in a purse, which makes slightly more sense I suppose than a cardboard box, or a paper bag, the more typical conveyances for wads of cash to be left in. But then, who leaves their purse hanging in the public bathroom? Where are you car keys or your bus pass? Your sunglasses? Your cell phone? How did this lady get home? Even if you forgot about the $97,000 you had jammed in there; what about your breath mints???
In October of 2007, another $65,000 was “dropped”, “left behind”, “lost” by another armored car (http://www.sptimes.com/2007/10/05/Southpinellas/Hey__65_000_in_cash__.shtml) near St. Petersburg, Florida. A sanitation plant employee found it lying in the roadway near the garbage bags. It wasn’t in one of those cool canvas bags with the single dollar signs on it (which I know they come in from years of “Batman” reruns), no, it was in a PLASTIC BAG. Apparently it had been run over several times. It apparently dropped out of the back of an armored car which had recently passed through.
Hey, forget about bolting sheets of lead onto your truck! Just CLOSE THE BACK DOOR. Write it on your hand if you must, as soon as you put your hollow point bullet-loaded gun away: “Note to self: Close back door of armored vehicle!”
In Littleton, Colorado in 2005, a teenager left the $50,000 his father had given him “to start a new life” (http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local/4926337/detail.html), on top of his car and DROVE OFF, spilling the money all over the roadway. I too have left stuff on top of my car and drove off; many cups of coffee, a few cans of Diet Coke; at least two times, the gas cap after pumping my own gas.
But I just know that if I left, like, the change from buying the newspaper, or say, $50,000 in cash, I’d have this little niggling feeling like, “Where the heck is that $50,000 in cash? Darn, it was just here…” Not to mention, WHY WOULD YOU PUT IT ON TOP OF YOUR CAR IN THE FIRST PLACE??
It’s much more common of course for people to leave cash in taxis, along with the iPod, or iPhone or iGlasses. And that’s what happened in July 2007, in Manila, when someone left $17,000 in a “motorcycle taxi” (what’s that?) (see: http://hubpages.com/hub/Taxi_driver_returns_lost_money_worth_US17000).
The other favorite thing people love to forget about: priceless Stradivariuses. (Stradivarii?)
In April of 2008, some guy left his $2 million dollar Stradivarius in the third row of a shuttle van he’d taken from Newark after returning from a concert in Texas (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90252259). So, you might ask yourself, when you’re exiting the shuttle, “Ok, I’ve got my rolling bag, my camera, and my house keys. Now what am I coming home from? Why am I here? Oh yeah; I just was in Texas performing on my $2 million dollar Stradivarius. Well, I’ve got my house keys; I’m good to go.”
In May of 2004 (http://articles.latimes.com/2004/may/18/local/me-cello18) a Stradivarius cello valued at $3.5 million dollars was left on the owner’s front stoop in California. Some lady found it a few days later near a Silver Lake dumpster.
In October of 1967 (now we’re going back), some guy in LA left a “Duke of Alcantara” Stradivarius violin either ON TOP OF HIS CAR or maybe (he can’t remember) in his UNLOCKED car when he went grocery shopping (http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/pearl101794.htm). Who goes grocery shopping when you have a Stradivarius in your car?? Can’t the Pop Tarts wait? Can’t you go home and drop off the (in this case, piece of crap, valued only at $800,000) instrument before you go into Waldbaums to buy your arugula??
And again, who puts their Stradivarius on top of their car? WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?? I am starting to understand the $50K, but the Stradivarius??
As it turns out, even those people whose names are synonymous with their instruments can forget their names, er, instruments in the back of taxis as Yo Yo Ma did in 1999, forgetting all about his $2.5 million cello on the way to a hotel from his home in Manhattan (http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19991017&slug=2989399). Did I mention he was in the taxi on his way to rehearse for a concert that night, which would certainly have been a boring concert without his cello?
And the most amazing thing of all? All these wads of money were either returned to the owner, or pending return (except for about $29,000 that the teenaged boy lost in increments of $100 bills). That’s pretty cool.
I once found a $20 bill on the sidewalk and I was happier than a clam for 2 days. I felt lucky, privileged, attentive and in the right place at the right time for the first time in my life. Clearly, I was wrong.
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