Found And Lost

Last week I found a wad of money in my pants pocket while dressing for work. It was such an unexpected pleasure that I did a little celebration jig in the bedroom. But that was before I took the time to stop and think about my good fortune.

For some reason, finding the surprise money turned out to be a blessing and a curse. Of course, I was glad to stumble on some extra cash by accident. But at the same time, I got so worked up that I thrashed about in my closet checking the pockets of all my other pants under the ridiculous assumption that there was more where that came from.

There wasn't. And that realization only resulted in a weird sort of internal investigation. Even though I found the money in my pocket in my pants in my closet in my house, I made the mistake of wondering, "Where did this come from?"

Beyond that, I asked myself, "Why is it in my pocket? And more important, why didn't I spend it when I had the chance?" That's when I heard a little voice in my head saying, "Who were you with and what were you doing with money in the first place?" After that, things started to get a little fuzzy and my paranoia took over.

As I stood there, I started to worry that it might be a trap of some sort. And even if it wasn't, how was I going to explain how I got the money in the first place? Suddenly, I went from being confused to being sneaky. In other words, I started planning how to hold on to my secret stash.

Obviously, it would have been simple to just stick the money in my wallet and forget about it. Even better, my gut was telling me to go charging out of the house and make some totally frivolous purchase immediately. But then I realized that that would be a dead giveaway.

Finally, it occurred to me that if I really wanted to keep my money, then maybe I should leave it alone and let everything look undisturbed. I figured that would help me in the guilt/innocence phase of any eventual inquiry as to my whereabouts on the morning I found the money.

Amazingly, within the span of about five minutes, I'd gone from being elated to curious to paranoid to sneaky to guilty. Even worse, I was planning my own defense, complete with alibis, documentation, and physical evidence in an effort to prove that I didn't do anything wrong.

It was while I was in the middle of this downward spiral of stupidity that my wife walked in the room and saw me in a state of half dress with a couple of wadded up bills in my hand. It was a critical moment in my warped logic and it caused all of my brain synapses to fire at once.

"Here," I said, "take this money and use it to buy the kids' school supplies." She smiled, took the money with a kiss, carefully folded the bills, put them in her wallet, and left the room without saying a word. And before she could even shut the door, I was back to zero.

Is it just me, or is there a pattern at work here?