Funny Money

Cash back from a purchase, produced an interesting dollar bill.

It’s pink, and I don’t think the color is bleeding from accidentally running through the washer with the colours.

When the cashier put the bill in my hand, nestled in between other bills, thinking the store was passing off dollars they probably should not have accepted onto me, I went “Oh, Oh. Is this stolen money?”

The young cashier looked clueless and said, "I don’t know".

"Well, it looks to me like somebody robbed a bank and the dye pack exploded", said I in a somewhat joking manner.

Cashier responded with a little giggle that indicated to me that she didn’t have a clue what I was alluding to.

I could have asked her to exchange the pink dollar for one that didn’t look like it had been involved in a crime, but didn’t because I wanted to keep it as a souvenir — I've added it to my funny money stash.

That’s right, I have a little stash of funny money — my favorite of which is a $2 bill.

I don’t even know what half of these coins are but, just like rocks sometimes call for me to pick them up, these coins called out "keep me".

I do know some are foreign, and two are Susan B. Anthony dollars. I once had a Kennedy Half Dollar, but it was stolen.

My fault.

When I was living in that loft apartment in Long Beach, management sent up two guys to work on something or other. One worker saw the half dollar, called out to me, while I was in another room, asking if I wanted to sell it.

My answer was, "No. I’m saving it".

When I heard his partner say, "You should have just taken it", I should have gotten up, gone into the room where the workers were, retrieved and put the coin in a safe place but didn’t; and, sure enough, after the workers left, the Kennedy coin was nowhere to be seen.

Of course, I complained to management. The complaint went nowhere.

I became a lot less trusting after that and, in ensuing years, completely paranoid of having workers inside, as I learned of far worse things that's happened to others.

Even now, every time I put in a work order here at the senior complex, I hide my credit cards, any documents that might reveal social security and/or banking information, also the organizer that holds my funny money and passwords.

Family going through my things, after I’m gone, are gonna be stumped by the pink dollar. Though, I don’t know if they’ll associate it with a possible bank robbery, thinking I might have been involved in something they don’t know about. LOL.

As for the $2 bill, I don’t know if any of them (the family) even know that yes, at one time, $2 bills were a thing, the bill is not a fake.

It wouldn’t be safe for anyone, including myself, to try to spend the $2 bill because, from what I've seen and heard and read about, it looks like not many outside of us Boomers know $2 bills are legit.

I recall hearing about a fast food worker, some three/four years ago, calling the cops on a customer who tried to pay for his meal with a $2 bill. The fast food worker refused to take the "fake" money and, when the customer insisted, called the cops.

Fortunately for the customer, the cop knew $2 bills had been a thing and some were still in circulation.

It didn’t go so well for a guy who paid for a purchase at Best Buy with an old stash of $2 bills. Because neither the cashier or manager or cop that showed up had ever seen a two-dollar bill before, the guy was actually arrested, jailed and the Secret Service was called in.

Seriously, the freaking Secret Service.

Once the Secret Service confirmed the bills were legit, they let the guy go.

I never learned what happened after that, but I hope the guy sued the pants off Best Buy.

I sometimes worry that, after my generation is gone, the world will be populated by those who have no knowledge of things associated with the Before Times.