This $20 Bill Has A Story...

Some friends and I were downtown for a free concert the other day, and I left for a few minutes, to buy myself a beverage. When I got back, there were kids throwing popcorn at each other, and the stuff was everywhere. They managed to splash me with something as well, and I was suddenly wet, with heavens knows what. #trauma Anyway, as I walked back towards my group of friends, I spy a couple of bottles of water on the ground. Unopened bottles. So I immediately open one up and use it to clean off the splatter of whatever that got on me, and pocket the other. I can only assume that while I was gone, some place, likely the local movie theater, came downtown and handed out free popcorn and water bottles. 

But then the tale gets interesting. I hand off the full bottle to my friend who dehydrates easily, and taste the water I bought, (some sort of unsweetened, flavored stuff that I'm sure I'll review here at some point). 

Anywho, I give my purchased water to my friend because I really don't like it, and it's her favorite flavor. she hands the small bottle back to me, and a minute or two later, up comes this strange young man, who asks me if there is any water left in the tiny little bottles (6oz) in front of me. Well there was, and one bottle was still unopened, so I said so, and this fellow offers me $20 for one of the bottles! 

I must say here that I was proud of myself, as I only paused for a moment, before I picked up the bottle with my left hand, offering the bottle to him, while holding my right hand outstretched in anticipation of payment, looking him straight in the eye. Well he runs off saying he'll be right back, which I don't believe for a second. I mean, seriously, who pays $20 for a 6oz bottle of water with no label? Sure enough though, this college kid come trotting back less than two minutes later with a bill in his hand, and offers it to me! It's actually twenty dollars! Needless to say, I handed him that bottle real quick-like. He runs off, and somehow, even though I was sitting with 5 of my friends in close proximity, only one of them actually noticed what happened. So I told the tale to my friends.

It was such a strange tale, that I ended up carrying the bill in my purse for a week, each time I encountered it, relating the tale yet again, the those nearby. After a while, I decided to finally spend it, but not before marking it for Where's George, and writing "read my fantastic tale" on it, so that I could track it and folks could read the story of how it came to be worth "George-ing". And of course, I wrote this blog entry, and linked to it on the bill's page.

So that's the tale of the tiny twenty-dollar water bottle. A bottle that was given away for free, discarded, picked up off the ground, given to a friend, traded back, and finally sold to a desperate college student, when there was a grocery store less than two blocks away.

It's almost unbelievable! Almost. *wink*