Rant #1,258: Lost ... and Found

For me at least, this has certainly been the week of finding lost items.

As I have told you for the past few days, my mother found my first grade class photo.

I am still amazed that she found it, and I am still mesmerized by its beauty as sort of the missing piece of my life that has finally been found.

Yesterday, I found something very different. It wasn't a personal keepsake that had been lost, but heck, it made my day.

Without going into a long story, let's just say that I was looking for something on the dresser in my bedroom.

I was looking and looking for this document, which related to my new car, and I simply could not find it.

Well, I found the document that I was searching for, which was great, but in searching for it, I also uncovered something that I didn't even know that I had.

Let me preface this by saying that this is the first time that something like this has happened to me in probably about 30 years.

I found money. And I won't tell you how much, but heck, it was enough to really, really make me happy.

It was stuffed in an envelope on my dresser that dates back to December of last year.

I don't know why or how I didn't realize that I had this money, but when I saw it, my eyes popped.

Oh, we're not talking about thousands of dollars here, just a couple of bills that would have still been buried had I not been looking for something else.

I remember that about 30 years ago, I was in a florist shop, for whatever reason, and I found a $50 bill on the floor. I quickly pocketed it, and I was happy.

The next time anything like this happened to me was probably about 20 years ago, sort of.

While at work, I found a whole wad of checks wrapped up in a rubber band. I remember that visions of a reward were dancing in my head, as it was probably a payroll drop that somebody dropped.

I contacted the company on the checks, they told me to discard them, they didn't even thank me, and that obviously led to nothing ventured, nothing gained.

The next time was about 10 years ago, also at work.

I found a wad of bills tied up in a rubber band. I remember that I made a broadcast at work at what I had found, and one of my fellow employees came forward, saying that it was money he had made from another job, and it must have fallen out of his pocket.

He worked at a local hotel at night, off the books, so he got paid in cash. I had no reason to doubt him, so I gave him back the money. He said he would take me out to lunch for returning the money.

He never did.

I remember as a kid, walking to school, my friend Howie and I found a wallet, and scattered about it were various identification cards, such as a driver's license, and what they used to call charge plates, which today we know as credit cards.

Based on what we found, we located the person it belonged to. Evidently, the person had been mugged, the crook(s) stole all the money in the wallet, and left everything else strewn about.

Again, visions of a reward danced in my head, and my friend's head.

After school, we both went over to the person's apartment.

We rang the doorbell, and the person barely poked his head out the door after we announced who we were.

We saw the person was pretty banged up, and was probably in his 70s or 80s or perhaps even older.

We gave him back what we had found, and left, not even expecting anything being given back to us because of his age and how he looked.

And that brings me back to the present day, where it was I, myself, who lost this money, only to retrieve it myself.

Again, it would still be sitting there if I hadn't been looking for something else.

What else will I find this week?

Who knows, but it will be hard to top what has been uncovered thus far.