Twenty dollars

It’s easy to drop some money. A couple dollars is irrelevant to talk about. A huge amount of money is just unlikely. Therefore, if a person drops some money, it ought to be about twenty dollars.

The elders are so careful that they won’t drop money, and children shouldn’t carry that much money around. People have jobs to do will be too busy to drop twenty dollars, even if you ask them to do it sincerely. So if someone drops some money, he/she should be a college student, and college students tend to do unwise things on campus. So if there is someone ever drops some money, it’s really likely to be a college student drops twenty dollars on campus.

Either a twenty dollar-worth pile of coins or a twenty dollar bill, it’d be noticeable, so a college student will see it. Let’s say this person is a “he”, just because it’s shorter and therefore more convenient to type than “she”. So he sees this money, and because he is in college, he is clever enough to stop and think. Do you see now why I have to spend a whole paragraph to make sure that he is a college student? If he is anyone else – think about it – he’d be either too busy or too ignorant to deal with this situation, and I’d have no incentive to talk about such insignificant incident. Now what this college guy thinks and decides is the matter. It’s simple enough: to ignore, to take it and use it, or to return it.

If that college student ignores the money, he can be either too rich, or he doesn’t know how to read, or he doesn’t know what money is, which are extremely unlikely. He wouldn’t have to be a college student, would he? College students are really special people, mostly because they would stop in front of twenty dollars, instead of ignoring it and join the rest of the world.

Then what should he do with this money? Of course he should return it, and I want him to return it, or else this blog of mine would be more inappropriate than it already is. Since kindergarten we all learned to return dropped stuffs, because “stealing is bad”, and it’s bad indeed. One can even relate to the Commandment of not coveting neighbor’s twenty dollars. So this decent college guy, after awhile hesitating, decides to give up his desires of music and movies and turns the money in at a front desk of the nearest dorm. The front desk person happens to be another college student, because who else would want to do such a job? So this person goes through all the process of thinking and because this world is perfectly good, this college student finally chooses to put the money there, waiting for the owner to come and take it. How great is that?

Talking about the owner of this money, after about three weeks he will realize of the loss (it’s “he” again, sorry for my laziness). He then will think and know that it’s unlikely for his money to be untouched until now. But because people are nice so he still has his hope. Now when he wants to find it, he has no idea where to get to. Should he go and ask every single front desk in all of the buildings on campus? Because he is a college student, his rational thinking will undoubtedly tell him, “No!”

So what’s the result? The money will stay at a desk forever, untouched, forgotten forever. A romantic middle school girl will consider it as a proof for the goodness of human beings. A college student studying business like me will say it’s a waste of asset of society, especially in this economic depression. So should the guy who saw the money have really returned it?

What if we return back to the time he saw the money and have him change his decision. Now he is standing there, taking twenty dollars and then goes to a CD store. He chooses and buys the album that he has been staring at for weeks. He’ll feel so happy and lucky; he’ll work harder and study better: his life can be changed! The store manager will also be happy, and he will be nicer to his wife and children when he gets home at night. The author of the album will be happy even more, because his/her work is paid off and he/she knows that there are people out there appreciate his/her music. There can be many other people whose lives will be better but I’ll stop here because you already get the idea and I am bored.

If you really read this post until here, then I’m surprised and grateful. But really, if you see twenty dollars dropped somewhere on campus, then just keep it and use it. I already did a whole statistical, philosophical explanation for you to defend yourselves from being guilty. Remember though, twenty-one dollars is a different story, and I won’t talk about it.