I was sick last week. So sick that I didn’t do anything writing-related from Tuesday night until this Monday. I think I had the flu. Not the barfing/sitting on the “commode” type of flu, but the my-head’s-gonna-blow-up, I-ain’t-got-no-energy (and I don’t care if that’s a double negative), sleep-for-15-hours-and-still-feel-crappy sort of flu that then resides in your ear and sinuses, keeping you dizzy enough that you smartly cancel a very busy week of appointments, wear pajamas whenever possible, and forget to wash your hair.
The second day into this illness, I decided that if I strapped on snow pants and a parka, and extra layers of clothing, boots, hat, scarf, dog poop bags—the whole bit—I would have what it takes to walk the dog to the park and back, the same route we used to run before it started snowing. And, if I accomplished this task, I wouldn’t have to walk up and down the basement stairs for 20 minutes to make up for no longer running.
I actually felt quite good walking in the fresh air. Man, it was cold, though, and the snow was coming down. The snow was coming down not “hard,” precisely, considering this is Canada. But coming down hard enough that tracks were getting obscured within minutes.
So Allie and I rounded a corner onto a busy road, and I had to shorten her lead to make sure cars didn’t slide off the road and hit us (logically, I knew shortening her lead didn’t mean the cars wouldn’t slide off the road, but at least I would be saved the embarrassment of the driver shouting, “Her damn dog raced into traffic!”) While trudging along with the short lead, what did I suddenly see sticking out of the snow? A $50 bill. Right away, I knew it was a fifty, because we have colored money in Canada. For those not in the know, this is what a $50 looks like:
Which sorta confused me, because it used to look like this:
Same guy (I think), but when, like me, you never see fifties, you don’t remember who’s on front (turns out it’s William Lyon McKenzie King, only one of our most important Prime Ministers ever).
But it was pink, and so I snatched it up. Then looked around. Cars were driving past, and several yards/meters (take your pick) in front of me I could see a couple walking. Had one of them dropped the fifty? I decided the couple might be a pair of women from my neighborhood whom I often encounter while walking or running Allie. So I began trudging after them in hopes I might catch them. Because it was a fifty! A $5 bill I would keep. A ten, yes, probably. A twenty? You snooze, you lose! But a fifty? At this time of year, when we’re supposed to act charitably toward one another and wait until April to be a jerk? Maybe it was my illness influencing me, but I felt so bad. I could not in all conscience keep that fifty. Maybe someone was filming me to verify my honesty. Maybe someone felt compelled to hang their hand out a speeding car window in the frozen, snowy day, and they accidentally dropped the $50. Maybe it didn’t belong to the people walking several yards/meters (take your pick) in front of me. Maybe it belonged to the person in the house of the driveway two feet away from where I grabbed the bill.
So I backtracked to that driveway. Allie couldn’t figure out what was going on. The dog park was in another several feet, and she was getting antsy. When I reached the driveway, I got more and more confused. No tire tracks, no footprints leading out of the driveway. In fact, no one had even shoveled the driveway. I glanced around at the surrounding driveways, and it was much the same story. By this point I was totally convinced the $50 belonged to the walking couple, and so I trudged off after them again. But by the time I reached the dog park, they were long gone.
Maybe it’s because I was sick, but my conscience was working overtime. I’d found the $50 close enough to the high school that it made sense to me that if the strolling couple weren’t my neighbors, they must be kids from the high school. Even though it was somewhere around 9:20 a.m. and they should have been IN school… All the way home, I wondered what to do. Because of the dizziness and ringing in my ears, I wasn’t thinking too clearly, so it took the rest of the 45 minute walk to figure it out.
First, I called the neighbor, but she hadn’t gone out that day. Then I called the high school and asked the secretary to announce over the loudspeaker that someone had found an unspecified amount of money in the area, and if a student could describe the denomination and approximately where it was found, they could have it. If not, the finder would treat her family to Chinese take-out. I figured I’d give until the weekend for a student to come forward. Then, realizing the walk had totally exhausted me, I forgot about it and fell into bed.
The next day, I was finally starting to feel better. I still couldn’t work (as in write), but I could make my rescheduled massage therapy appointment. I was puttering about when the phone rang. It was a student from the high school. She’d lost a $50 bill, she told me, walking along Road I’d Walked Along with another student, going toward the corner store, because they both had spares (why they weren’t in school at 9:20 a.m.). She’d been out of town on a shopping trip to the West Edmonton Mall (which, for Canadians, is almost like going to Disneyland, but it’s Edmonton so the theme park and waterpark are all indoors), and the $50 was left over from that trip. It was all the money she’d had in her pocket, and she’d lost it “near the dog park.” Then I asked her to describe her ski jacket, because I remembered one of the couple was a lot smaller than the other and the smaller was wearing a coat with a white background and this memorable pattern I can no longer remember. But I remembered it well enough when she phoned, and it was the jacket of one of the pair walking in front of me.
I had been right to listen to my conscience, not keep the money, and instead try to find the owner. The girl popped over on her lunch hour, and I gave her the $50.
Integrity. It got me because I was sick. Don’t expect it to happen again.
Happy December!