A Duffle Bag

10/16/1996

I stumbled upon something amazing today. Let me backup for a second, so I do a lot of walking as a hobby. And I was walking through this mostly abandoned strip mall when all of a sudden I came across this duffle bag. Guess what I found in this duffle bag? Twenty thousand dollars! What luck, I know.

Now my first thought wasn't on taking the money. I had no idea if it was stolen or not. But after meticulously counting every single dollar bill in that bag I found nothing out of the ordinary. No marks on the bills to indicate they were special, no added devices that could track the bills in any way. Nothing but the dollar bills and some rubber bands.

I then shifted my attention to the duffle bag itself. After all, a lot of people add name tags and or contact information onto bags to make sure they don't lose them. I look at every single angle of this red duffle bag and the only thing I managed to find was a little black notebook in one of the side pockets. And aside from the book smelling vaguely citrusy, I couldn't find anything identifying in the contents of the book. In fact, every page of the book was completely blank. Empty white voids held within a little black book.

Speaking of empty I then started looking around me. I figured if there's no name on the bag and nothing wrong with the bills on top of the blank notebook, maybe this was a recent purchase. Maybe someone bought the duffle bag, emptied their bank account, bought a small notebook, and then just went to go find a bathroom somewhere. Once again, I found nothing. Not a soul walking the streets and the two remaining store fronts in the strip mall were closed.

So I guess the money is mine in that case, right? I mean, don't get me wrong I have a mile long list of things I could do with twenty thousand dollars. I'm just uncertain about if it's right for me to take it. The money exists in a weird halfway stolen, halfway earned category which is both hard for me to fully celebrate and also hard for me to fully discourage the find. In any case, the money wasn't doing any good just sitting in the middle of the street. So I took it home with me.

I haven't done anything with it yet, currently it's just sitting in a corner of my kitchen. I'm also looking through the notebook. There has to be some trick to it I think. You don't leave twenty thousand dollars with a notebook for no reason. At Least I don't think so anyway. At any rate, I now have twenty thousand dollars. And now comes a hard decision, what to do with it.

10/17/1996

So it turns out I was right about the notebook. For context, I was boiling some water for spaghetti and after I was done with the pot I put it down on what I thought was a towel next to my sink. Turns out it was the notebook I forgot to put up last night which just so happened to be next to my sink. Whoops. So I quickly took the pot off the book and in doing so the book fell on the floor.

When I picked up the book I realized there were words on the pages. The citrus smell must've been lemon juice or something and the heat made the writing visible. However when I started reading the book I didn't find a secret spy message. Nor did I find the start of some long unsolved robbery case. Instead on the pages of this little black notebook were passages from A Christmas Carol.

The passages described the miserly nature of Ebeneezer Scrooge. How he hoarded every cent of his treasure, how he would steal the tuppence off the eyes of a dead man, and how he would refuse to pay for extra coals to heat his business. As I read the passages I couldn't help but stare at the duffle bag that held a large sum of money. I thought about how that money would be used in my life. Sure, I would probably use a lot of it immediately. But the rest? It would probably sit in a bank account for years on end. It may never be spent by me

I thought about what that money could mean to someone. Someone who is struggling to pay bills, someone who is homeless, and someone who is starving on the streets. And in that moment of reflection, with the thoughts of the crotchety old miser intermingling with the suffering of humanity I made a decision. Seeing as I don't really need all of the money, I decided I would only keep one thousand dollars and the rest I would donate to as many charities as I could. Spread the good fortune around a little bit.

Unfortunately my bank is currently closed so I can't start the process now. Fortunately I have nothing going on tomorrow so first thing in the morning I'll get to donating. Just wanted to write this journal entry before bed. I'll write again tomorrow after the biggest spending spree of my life.

10/18/1996

I just got back from the bank, the deposit went smoothly. After that I started walking around, looking for places to donate the money too. My first destination was a homeless shelter which got a sizable three thousand dollar donation. After that I stumbled onto a food bank which also got three thousand dollars worth of donation money. I then wandered into an animal shelter and I managed to convince myself to give four thousand dollars mainly because I was looking at a cute little pug.

After donating ten thousand dollars, the rest of the money was quite easy to part ways with. I gave three thousand to a local hospital, I gave three thousand to a local university and the final three thousand I gave to a museum. After donating the last of the money I began walking home. The entire walk my decision slowly started to actually sink in to me. I had actually donated the money instead of keeping it. I know it may sound cheesy or cliche but I mean it when I say that it felt great doing those deeds.

When I got home I realized I still had the duffle bag the money had came in. I left it in the corner of my kitchen still and now that all the money was gone it laid flatly against my floor. I thought for a moment about what I should do with it and the decision was clear to me. I took that duffle bag and I hung it on my wall next to some photographs of my family. Now every time I look at my wall I will think back to today and I remember it was all because I found a duffle bag and a little black book.