And then I found $120

It’s the cliché add-on to the too-long, anticlimactic story that goes nowhere: “And then I found $5.”

Everyone has heard some variation of this story at least once over the course of their many awkward, who-invited-this-girl-to-the-party social encounters. It usually goes something like this:

You: Well, we sure are having some awesome weather lately.

Awkward girl: Yeah, I was thinking I was going to have to change out of my cropped pants before I left the house today, but when I opened the door and felt how warm it was, I decided against it. I rode my bike all the way to the café I work at, over on the north side, and I didn’t get cold at all. But I think I might have gotten a little sunburned, which reminds me, I need to stop by the drugstore to pick up some sunscreen…

You: [fighting to pay attention out of respect for whichever one of your friends brought this girl, but twitching involuntarily as you drift in and out of consciousness]

Awkward girl: [realizing that her tale is going nowhere and looking for a quick way to both end and justify her story] …so I decided to double-knot my shoelace because I didn’t want it to come untied again. [pause] And then I found $5!

OK, before this blog post turns into a story that would require the use of that line—which should be reserved for emergency situations only—I’m going to cut to the chase: when people resort to this phrase, it’s usually out of desperation, and it is almost certainly a lie.

I mean, it is not entirely implausible that a person would stumble upon an unintentionally discarded five-dollar bill, but how often does that really happen?

I never find money. I get excited when I discover a forgotten dollar in an old pair of pants. It helps ease the disappointment of not fitting into them.

A few days ago, however, my luck changed. Big time.

It was a warm and sunny day. (Relatively speaking, that is. In Montana, the first month of spring is usually more like the sixth month of winter.) It was probably too cold for shorts, but I was wearing them anyway. I ignored the red splotches that were beginning to form on the parts of my legs where long pants should have been, focusing instead on the clear blue sky and the greening front lawns.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a flash of green with…numbers on it? I stopped short and backed up. I lowered into a crouch and, blinking my eyes in disbelief, picked up not one, but two bills of U.S. currency—a hundred and a twenty. Together, they totaled $120 (see how I did that math in my head?).

I stood up, dumbfounded, and checked my surroundings. As far as I could tell, there wasn’t a soul or a hidden camera in either direction. I stuffed the cash in my sports bra and continued on my run, excited and amazed at my great fortune.

I smiled as I pranced along, dreaming about all the stuff I could buy—new running shoes, concert tickets, 120 McChicken sandwiches…the possibilities were endless! I felt like the Publishers Clearing House had just showed up on my doorstep with a giant cardboard check.

With each passing mile, though, my excitement gradually faded into guilt. That wad of cash in my bra—though soaked in my sweat and beginning to chafe my skin—wasn’t mine. I didn’t earn it, and it didn’t seem right for me to keep it.

I’ve always been a worrier. I hate to use the word “pessimist,” but whenever I’m faced with a troublesome situation, I find myself consistently fixated on the worst possible outcome.

When I got into trouble as a kid, for example, my mom would occasionally threaten to send me to bed without dinner. Looking back on it now, I’m pretty sure she never intended to actually follow through on her stern warnings. But as a budding worrywart, I was inclined to prepare for the worst. I found an old shoebox and filled it with an emergency food supply: a Ziploc baggie full of Cheez-Its, a couple of Chewy granola bars, a bag of fruit snacks, and a Capri Sun juice pouch.

Months later, when she was cleaning out my bedroom, my mom found my secret box of snack rations stashed underneath my bed. She felt horrible when I told her what it was, and I’m pretty sure she never threatened to starve me again, but that wasn’t enough to cure me of my chronic worrying.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that this $120 belonged to someone who really needed it. I definitely wasn’t thinking “botched drug deal” or “rich, careless lawyer on his way to lunch.” The backstory I imagined was more like “little old lady walking to the pharmacy to get a refill on her heart medication.”

I felt like I was stuck inside an episode of Full House. I needed to go home and have a heart-to-heart with John Stamos so we could figure out the right thing to do and then share an uncomfortably long hug accompanied by a collective “awww…”

But since John Stamos wasn’t answering his phone, I resorted to Plan B: calling my mom. For 20 minutes, we hemmed and hawed over what to do. I could hear my dad in the background yelling, “She found cash? Tell her to go out to dinner!”

My mom offered a slightly more ethical suggestion: that I monitor the lost and found ads in the local paper over the next few days.

Most of my friends thought I was crazy for hanging on to $120 cash. “No one is going to put out an ad for that, Brooke,” they told me. “They’re going to kick themselves for being so dumb, assume the money is gone forever, then suck it up and try to forget about it.”

I wouldn’t budge. I knew that for a lot of people, $120 could mean the difference in making ends meet. I put myself in the mystery money-dropper’s shoes. What if I, a broke and unemployed recent college graduate, had accidentally dropped $120 in the street? Would that be a huge, terrible loss for me? Darn tootin’. Would I at least try to recover it by placing an ad in the local classifieds? You betcha. Why am I suddenly writing like I’m from North Dakota? I dunno.

So listen up all you naysayers who assume that every human being on the planet has the same moral code as Bernie Madoff: guess what I found in the classifieds the following morning (besides an ad for a five-dollar “like new” purple lava lamp)? An ad for lost cash in the amount of $120.

Turns out, the money belonged to a college-age girl who baby-sits for a family that lives in the neighborhood where I found it. She had just gotten paid for the week, and the bills had slipped out of her pocket on the way home. The look of relief and gratitude on her face as I returned the money definitely made me happier than anything I would have bought with it (except for the McChickens). Plus, I knew I had scored some major karma points.

So there you go—a happy ending that surely left you feeling warm and fuzzy inside. Take that, John Stamos.