I Found Ten Bucks

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A moment in the way back machine.

I was fanatic about sports stars as a kid. I collected autographs, called sports phones to find out the Yankee score mid-game (Got in a lot of trouble for that at $.49 a minute) and read the sports page as soon as the paper hit the box. I read every line in every box score.

We knew all that.

Yet I remember a Saturday morning at the tender age of 12. I was up early and hanging pictures on my bedroom wall. Reggie, Wilt, The French Connection, Joe Ferguson, Ernie D.

Just rip the tape and hang. Rip the tape, rip the tape.

I had no idea that my mother needed the tape for something later in the day. When she found me, she ripped me.

I remember a little of it. "It wasn't your tape." "You didn't ask." "Go to the store and get more tape."

My mother wasn't mean. She just wanted to teach me responsibility. I'd show her.

I gathered my change and headed for the store. It was about a mile hike through the woods. In those days kids could walk around without fear of being dragged away and raped and murdered. It might have happened then...we kept it quiet.

I was just finishing the walk and was making my turn into Avery's Market, hoping I had enough money for the tape. My head was down. I was still muttering.

The ten dollar bill was just sitting there in the grass.

"Holy crap!" I yelled.

Finders-keepers, I thought.

I remember getting home and tossing that Scotch-tape on the counter and showing my mother the candy bar I was eating - Butterfingers - and all the extra money I had. She hadn't even known that I left the house. She struggled for something to say, but it was my ten bucks.

I thought of all this because I saw a ten dollar bill in the street in Syracuse on Friday. I debated about performing the motion to bend down and pick it up. It had been a long week.

But I did. And my heart raced a little.

Finders-keepers, I thought.

Some 35 years had passed, but I reacted the same way.

I went into the nearest store and bought a Butterfingers candy bar.

Ten bucks.

I thought of all the money that passed through my hands since then. I thought of the cash that was flowing freely through the hands of my beautiful wife and her pack of hoodlums.

Found money has a way of staying with us.

I think we're out of tape.

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