We are broke. Flat out not-a-penny-to-our-name broke. Colin hasn’t been paid in three weeks because his boss is on vacation. That is a significant chunk of our income. On Friday we had approximately $30 left.
We scoured the circulars for the local grocery stores and made a meal plan to carry us through the weekend. For under thirty bucks we were able to keep our bellies full on breakfast lunch and dinner. I was quite impressed, considering we normally spend about that on one dinner alone. (Perhaps that’s why we’re broke?) And it wasn’t even Ramen three meals a day. It was homemade stuffed shells, hamburgers and corn on the cob with sweet potato french fries.
What we forgot to factor in was Monday (and cigarettes). I get paid tomorrow so we only had to make it through today. It is all well and good to eat for the weekend, but if we can’t get to work on Monday, let alone eat while we’re there, what use is it? Being the geniuses that we are, we decided to gather up all of our change and take it to the Coin Star.
We ransacked both cars, the bedroom, the laundry room, all of my purses, pockets of jackets and jeans, and come up with about $33. Awesome! That would totally get us through Monday, we would even have some to spare! We hopped in the car, which was dangerously low on gasoline, and drove to the bank.
A little girl in line ahead of us had a cup of change that she dumped in the machine. Her eyes lit up when she saw that she had saved an entire $7! Another family in line walked away with over $20. Change really does add up.
When it was our turn, we poured little by little all of our worth into the tray and listened to the machine whirling away, separating and counting. Our little ticket voucher popped out and it read $8.93. So.not.okay. We counted, we knew how much we had. $8.93 will hardly buy a gallon of gas these days, it was not going to do!
I went and got an employee, although I wasn’t sure what exactly I had expected him to do, how could I prove that I had put more in there? He opened up the machine and all of our coins come pouring out. Sure enough, something was wrong. After vacuuming, unplugging, twisting and peering through, we discovered that a few pennies had gotten stuck. He unstuck them and we were on our way. Grabbing handfuls of the uncounted coins and tossing them down the shoot.
I stood there in disbelief when I watched that ticket printout, this time with the exact opposite mistake. $67.32. I told the man that it couldn’t possibly be right, we had counted and it was only $33 and change. There was no way this was all ours. He looked at me and said, “Consider it found money.” We walked out nearly seventy-five dollars richer.
I felt terrible. What if it was that little girl’s money? What if she had been saving up her tooth fairy money all these years?
Colin reassured me saying, “The bank employee told us to take it, there is nothing we could have done about it, you tried” and he’s right, I did try. At least I said something. There are plenty of people out there who would have kept their mouth shut. I tried to give it back. Isn’t it funny how sometimes, the things you need the most fall out of the sky?
After we ate our delicious hamburgers (which we topped with mushrooms and cheese, courtesy of our windfall) we decided it was a good night for an ice cream cone. I promise, if I ever see that little girl again, I’ll treat her to one too.