Yesterday evening after work I met up with one of the new members of bookclub to join her, her bestfriend, and her roommate for some happy hour drinks. I only live about a block away from her, so I walked over and then caught a ride with them to Madison’s.

We had our drinks and got some soft pretzels and buffalo poppers as appetizers and then sat at an outdoor table for a few hours and hung out and talked. I had a decent time, and the girls all seemed nice. The best part of the evening, though, was the walk back to the car.

As we were walking down this sorta dark walkway, I happened to look at the pay phone on the wall to my right. On top of the phone I saw what appeared to be a few $1 bills. I grabbed the wad and examined it—there was over $20 there! Except for us, the area was totally deserted, so well, I sorta pocketed the cash. If there was someone around, or if the money was accompanied by a wallet or some other identification, I would’ve made an effort to determine if that person was missing some money and to return it to the rightful owner—much like I did when I was a little kid at Disneyland and found a $100 bill and a $50 bill tumbling along the ground. That time we WERE able to reunite the money with the rightful owners (and thus allow them to actually get to experience a day at the Magic Kingdom, which would have been impossible without the money), which is a good thing since that amount is quite a bit more substantial.

I do wonder, however, why the money was there. Was the person just using the top of the phone as a place to empty the contents of their pockets to search for something and somehow forgot to put back the cash? Was there some sort of shady deal going down where the instructions were to “leave a bunch of bills on top of the phone booth in the dark walkway”? Both scenarios pose problems though. If emptying pockets, that seems like too great a sum to forget about, and if making some sort of shady deal, the price doesn’t seem high enough.

I suppose I could’ve left the money there, but it seems that the odds are that someone else besides the rightful owner would have pocketed it. So, with nothing else to go on, I kept it. And, as a result, I made a profit of a little over $10 on my evening! Next drinks are on me, I guess!

Posted at 4:39 PM |