My new thing for the day was one of those cool experience that I always wanted, but never thought I would actually have. I know that sounds melodramatic, seeing as people put getting married, having kids, being a CEO, skydiving and winning the lotto in the same category as that, but its not. See, what happened is this. A couple years ago, a friend of mine told me about a website that tracked dollar bills based on the serial numbers.
From that day forward, I looked at money differently. That was my sophomore year in college and now that I'm halfway through my 3L year in law school, I still check every bill for that URL. I'm not as good about writing the URL on bills. I've done it once or twice, but I forget a lot. What I don't forget to do, though, is look for it. Since he told me about that site, I've wanted to find one and see where it had been. Every time I got money from an ATM or change at a restaurant, I'd scan the bill for the URL in the hopes that I'd get a glimpse into the life and times of the American dollar. But alas, it was not meant to be.
Flash forward to May 11th, 2010. I was getting lunch with my friend Stephen, who I'm literally only mentioning because he jokingly told me he was afraid to be featured in one of my posts. Hi Stephen. Lunch was delightful. We simply must do it again some time. At our lunch, I was a little worried about what I'd do for the day. Even though finals have been over for a little while now, I'm still very much in that mode of feeling like I don't have a lot of time to do things. Once we finished chatting and paid the bill, I looked down at the cash I was about to put in my wallet and saw the most beautiful sight known to man.
This bill makes the Mona Lisa look like macaroni art.
I managed to contain my excitement long enough to not look like a total creeper in front of a friend I hadn't seen in ages. The real ordeal began when I realized that a $3 tip would be about 20%. I hate leaving small tips at restaurants so keeping the dollar was out of the question and I'd already become "that customer" when I decided that my perfect meal was a mix of two things on the menu and attempted to create that sandwich with creative ordering techniques. Our waitress was patient, but unamused. So I left a $5 instead so I could keep my special, amazing, beautiful bill that I waited years and years to get.
I was unwilling to give up that dollar.
Once I got home I decided to keep the anticipation going a little bit. I didn't boot up the computer and look at the site right away. Instead, I hung out, watched some TV, took some pictures, and ordered a pizza. I decided me and Bill (oh, by the way, I named my dollar Bill. Get it? Its hilarious.) should have a girls' night in. Bill's a girl, by the way. Anyway, so me and I Bill decided to hang out, have fun, talk about boys and do all sorts of happy sillypants fun things.
We had a facial. Bill was nice enough to be my mask.
Bill posed for some glamor shots.
And then we... wait. That's not supposed to be in there.
Ignore this picture.
As our time together drew to a close, I knew it was time to enter Bill into the database and see where she came from. It turns out, only one other person had registered her and that was done in Amanda, Ohio. So Bill hasn't been around the block too many times. She's relatively new. I decided, after finally fulfilling my years long dream of finding a tracked bill, that it was time to release her back into the wild. Remember that pizza we were going to share? Well, my friend Bill became the tip. And good for her, being a productive member of society and whatnot.
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