Finding large sums of lost money on the streets can be a pickle for any moral soul. My wife just found some this morning and she’d like to return it, because she is a good egg. She’s gone about the business of putting up a sign that might provide this amount’s rightful owner with a means to see it returned. All good, should be interesting to see who contacts her, and get a sampling of humanity’s honesty.

When I see any bill on any street, in NYC or even Podunk, USA, without fail my thinking is: Yay, money, free money, wait – this is some sort of gang-initiation where some newbie is supposed to beat the crap out of the first person who dares snag this cash from the ground. Even a dollar leads me to this conclusion, because if I were running a gang my logic would be that the lower the amount used to select someone at random for the initiation-beating, the more frightening the legend of it and my gang. I would want to run a very cruel-sounding gang is all I’m saying.

Don’t get me wrong, that senseless rambling has never stopped me from taking the money – I’m apparently a bit more paranoid that leaving any money behind, even pennies, carries its own toll on the passerby. And I guess that screwy line of thinking beats out the street-money-beat-down fear. However, before I pick up any lost cash, I do a good bit of looking around for frothing-from-the-mouth teens hellbent on proving their worth to other psychopaths.