Lost and Found

“I just found this of the floor toward the back the store,” I said, holding forth my hand.

The store employee working at the customer service counter, a woman in her forties with big hair (1990s style), glanced down at my hand and then looked directly at me with squinted eyes. “What do you want me to do with that?” she asked.

“Obviously, someone dropped it on the floor.   I’m thinking they may come here looking for it.”

“Oh…”

Let me backtrack a bit.

While walking through the aisles of one of our local box stores, I chanced upon what was clearly a wad of money on the floor.  I scooped up the money and, before unfolding the wad, looked up and down the nearest aisles looking for other shoppers.  Finding nobody, I unfolded the money and found eleven dollars in mixed bills.

I could have easily stuffed the money in my pocket and called it a lucky day, but all sorts of objections assaulted that kind of thinking.

Most conspicuously, the money did not start in my pocket and was—quite literally—not mine.  Deeper down, I considered the type of person who might have dropped the money.  What if it was a young boy or girl who had lost their entire treasure on the way to buying a desired toy?  What if someone on a low, fixed income dropped the bills?

So, we find ourselves here at customer service.

I handed the bills to the woman behind the counter.  “You never know, somebody might come here looking for the money.  Much stranger things have happened.”

—Mitchell Hegman