Karma test: what do you do when you find a fat wallet?

The $23,800 test: They passed with honors

My older brother had Polio, and was 80% paralyzed... All my youth I was his legs or motor, getting him from place to place, fighting the fights he started or could not avoid... And people often gave him money, or tried to because my mother would raise holy hell if he accepted...One time, we were on a ferry boat in the Straits of Mackinaw, and I was still quite young... My mother had went to the rest room and left my brother sitting... An old man and his wife came by and tried to get my brother to take a dollar which my brother refused and refused, while I was thinking: Take The Money...


At the time, a dollar was a big deal... You could buy 20 hershy bars for a dollar, and we never had those sorts of treats... Finally, my brother accepted the money just to avoid a situation that was unpleasant for him, and then to avoid a situation even more unpleasant, he had me help him onto his crutches and he made his way to the side of the boat, and threw that dollar into the water... We were still tied up to the dock, and I looked at that dollar for the longest time, until it drifted out of sight... My Brother could be a great guy, and he taught me a lot about family and loyalty and morality...He has done well with his life, always supported himself, has a wife and a kid and a good job with authority... But I never quite trusted his intelligence after that...

I know my mother could be a bear... I have a two inch slice on my leg to prove that after a point it was better not to share... If I had shared, she would have flipped freekin out and run me to the hospital, and beat me after for scareing the beejesus out of her... So when my leg was about a third of the size it is now I covered up that slice and just let it heal... The thing is, that most of my early life I was considered no better than a beast of burden; and that I needed no more attention than would keep me servicable... If people wanted to give money away, they might have considered the pusher instead of the pushee, for my gratitude would have been unbounded... No one in this world would ever by choice have traded places with my brother, and not even I; but I must confess I was some time envious of him...

People are often the hand of God in a good sense, and they often try to make up for the deficiencies that other people endure, and it is all well and good for my mother to want no child of her's to become a begger, but if one must accept and endure some curse of nature why should that one not freely accept the kindness that comes natural to some??? I would have accepted kindness and spare change; but then, living with those folks demanded the demeanor of a philosopher, which sort of grew on me... They always did nothing that made sense, and a lot of it... Let me try that again... They were reasonable, and they always had a reason for wht they did, but their reason never offered a true or good explanation of their behavior...

If I were in possession of the $$$$$ by virtue of a contract by whose terms
I had purchased a house and all of its contents, I probably woud have kept it,
as part of my newly acquired property.





David

A little bit of fake fun:
one afternoon in the 1980s,
I was on my way on a Saturday
to meet my friend and law partner, Elliot,
at a custom knife and sword show in Manhattan.

While I was walking on the sidewalk, I saw a family
of a mother and a few boys enter a food stand.
One of those boys (maybe around 11 or 12 years old)
put out his hand to see if it was starting to rain.

I falsely pretended to believe that he was asking for a handout
and I put a bunch of cash ($$$$ in accumulated change)
from my trash cash pocket into his hand, and I kept on apace.

Multiple be the chuckles.

Last week I walked out of my chemistry class, and it wasn't until I was almost to my next class that I realized that I forgot my wallet. I turned back around, and someone was running up to me with it. It made my day, and I'm sure you made someone else's

WELCOME to the forum, Mouth!
If u feel like telling us about yourself,
u can fill out your profile (after clicking on your screen name).

Woud u have liked it better
if someone had unexpectedly crammed extra and additional cash
into your wallet b4 handing it to u??





David

Perhaps, but I am merely a capitalist; not a creative writer.

Facinating post Fido.

You seem to have been a very good brother.

Would it have ruined your brother to take hand outs?

Who knows, but I suspect his character developed more strongly for not taking them.

What would he have spent the money on? It hardly could have been saved for a cure and so he would have probably indulged himself. Nothing particularly wrong with that, but my bet is that he doesn't miss the candy and is proud that he didn't take hand outs.

If he had accepted the money it would be quite a cur that faulted him, but thanks to your mother he did not.

I have no knowledge of your mother, but in this one thing, at least, I think she was right.

Your mother helped your brother take the path of independence and it sounds like that was the right path for him.

In the end, you live with yourself and your decisions. I don't think anyone can be happy who is ashamed or disappointed with themselves.

Your brother can tell you if he wishes he took the money. Have you asked him?

I guess I'll never use you as a reference.

He could have spent the money on me... I assure you my gratitude would have been on the near side of underwhelming...People gave him a lot of neat stuff and cut him a lot of slack that they did not give, or cut for me... We were all in the same boat, and his legs limited mine... Over all, it was an interesting experience and one that can never be shared completely, and it marks me as different because no one can be around illness and not be made ill; and because my attitude regarding human responsibility to others has been totally altered from the average...

Sure you can.
So long as the requirements of the job for which you apply include self-deluded blowhard tightass creep, I could highly recommend you.

Way to go go gorilla on him... I hope he is not all sensitive, or you may have hurt his feelers...

OK - thanks!

Now I just need your real name and contact info...can't put just "snood" down on an application .

My feelers are functioning just fine Fido.

Sure you can. You're so obviously qualified it won't matter.

Jeez you offer to give me a reference and then you back off. I'm beginning to think your offer wasn't sincere.

It worked OK for getting him on Ignore.

You need sincere? Ok. You're an asshole. Sincerely.

I've never found a fat wallet. Once I found a five pound note on the ground at the prison and I turned it into security thinking it must belong to one of the men who dropped it on their way down to education. That's when I found out, because the guy in security told me, that the men aren't allowed to carry money - which after I thought about it, made quite a lot of sense - yeah - you wouldn't really want to keep alot of money on you or in your cell if you're in prison, would you?

This is something I've always been ashamed of. Once I bought a pair of trousers at a garage sale being held at a very nice house in an upscale neighborhood. My husband was in school- not working, and my son was a tiny baby. I was on maternity leave and hadn't had a paycheck (my pay was our only source of income) since my last one of the school year in June - my son was born in August - I wasn't going back to work until November- this was in October.
We had overdue bills piling up - and I was shopping for clothes for myself to wear when I went back to school as I still had a few pounds to lose after the birth of my son and couldn't yet fit into my prepregnancy clothes but maternity clothes were too big.
Anyway...I got the trousers home and was trying them on, put my hand in the pocket and found $60.00. I will never forget it - it was three 20.00 bills all folded up. I thought to myself, 'Oh, you have to take this money back to those people who sold you the pants...you know where they live....they didn't know this money was in the pocket...and then I thought, 'Well, they live in that fancy house in that fancy neighborhood and they probably didn't even miss it and you could use it to pay the electricity bill or for heat this month, or for food,' - I mean we really were living that close to the bone at that point.

So, I told a friend the next day and asked, 'What would you do?' And she said, 'I'd keep it. You bought the pants - you paid for them- the money was in the pocket...'
I said, 'Yeah, but they didn't MEAN to give me the money with the pants...' but then I looked at the stack of overdue bills ...so anyway - long story short - I kept it.
And I've never gotten over feeling guilty about it.

But then six months later I got this check from an insurance company for like 1200 dollars as reimbursement for a procedure I supposedly had done during my pregnancy. Thing is, I hadn't HAD that procedure, had never been to a doctor in Trenton, NJ and hadn't paid a penny out of pocket for anything during my pregnancy because I was a teacher, employee of the state, and that insurance covered everything - 100%.
So I told my sister and she's like, 'Jesus, Rebecca - don't look a gift horse in the mouth. The check has your name on it - cash it - and don't ask questions.'
I couldn't do it. I sent it back with a note explaining that they must have made a mistake. Later on my husband said he figured the doctor was double billing or something trying to cheat the insurance company.

I once dropped twenty pounds in a shop while paying for something and then my friend and I stopped in a pub to get a drink and I was going to pay and the note was gone. I figured out where I must have dropped it, went back to the shop and asked, 'Has anyone turned in a £20 note in the past half hour?' and the shopkeeper said, 'Yeah - someone did...is it yours?' and handed it to me.
My friend couldn't BELIEVE it! He was like, 'I have such bad luck and you have such good luck...if we ever get in a plane crash together - I know I'll die for sure and you'll be the only survivor.'

But then one of my students stole my wallet one day in class. His mom found my checkbook in his back pocket when she went to wash his pants. I told him I didn't care - just give me back my pictures. He'd already thrown the wallet and all the pictures in the dumpster....so you never know which way it's gonna go.

Why would I put snood on Ignore?

He obviously cares about what I post.