Each of us has some bad habits. I don’t think anyone is excused, but some bad habits are more obvious than others. I do not intend to list all my bad habits here, but I do want to talk about one of them.
For many years, I have stuffed whatever extra cash I have in my pockets. These are the same pockets in which I usually carry my wallet and my cell phone. I do not carry anything in my back pockets for several reasons, one of which is that I have a bad back and anything in my back pants pocket is an invitation to more misery. So I usually put my cell phone in one of my side pockets, the same pockets that I put spare dollar bills, and sometimes fives and sometimes 20s in. You can see where this is going. My ever-patient and vigilant wife, Roselle, often follows me around and announces that when I have pulled my phone out, cash has landed on the floor.
She isn’t alone. I can’t tell you the number of people in restaurants and grocery stores who have stopped me to tell me that I am responsible for some cash on the ground, as in, “Mister, you dropped some cash.”
For my morning walk I always take the same route down Sumner Street in the pitch black of the morning, usually starting out around 4:30 a.m. I reach into my pocket to pull out my cell phone so that I can listen to WAMC, but more often, to old-time radio and television shows. I think I have heard every old “Dragnet” program, and “Gunsmoke” and “The Lone Ranger.” We used to play a lot of old-time radio on WAMC but we got caught in a sensitivity time warp. “The Lone Ranger” was out because of Tonto being politically unacceptable and so on. I live for the moment at the end of the show when someone who didn’t know better was told by someone who did, “That’s the Lone Ranger.” Sometimes I tear up, remembering my childhood, but I truly love the moment.
I digress, as is my wont. The problem is that some of these shows have commercials that have to be eliminated. In order to do that, I pull the phone out of my pocket and whatever cash is in my pocket comes out and lands on the ground.
A short while ago, one of our very good neighbors wrote on our neighborhood sharing group that someone had dropped some money on Sumner Street and whoever lost it should call her and tell her how much it was in order to reclaim it. I really have no idea if the money was mine, but I suspect, based on my history, that it was, as it has been so many times before. What’s more, I certainly have no idea how much I have in my pocket at any given time. Trust me, I could not have cared less about getting the money back because I understand my bad habit, and I wrote a note to the lady asking if she would call me. She didn’t. I was going to tell her that if the money was not claimed, she should give it to the local food bank, which really needed it.
In any case, I probably won’t correct my bad habit and that’s that. I have been thinking that there must be others who share this bad habit. Some of you are probably yelling, “For shame! There are people who really need that money that you are so careless about.” They are certainly right about that, and for any of you who might find my money, keep it! And a word to our Good Samaritan: Thanks for trying.
