snickerdoodle

Have you ever noticed a tip jar at your favorite coffee shop or cafe in your area? I'm sure you have. And I'm sure you've put money in the jar when you have noticed it. The reason I'm sure you have is because the tips in those jars go to people like me, who work for minimum wage to pay for rent and bills with their paycheck and then use the tip money from those jars for necessities throughout the week like food, gas, and occasionally a good beer.

At the coffee shop where I work we get our tip money every Friday. The tip money is collected during the week, thrown into a pool and then distributed to each worker based on hours. Every Friday I know I'm going to end up with at least some cash in my hands, which is part of why I love Fridays. And no different than any other Friday, I got my tip money today. I looked at my little brown pastry bag (which is what the money is put in, I don't know why) of hard earned cash and on it read "JJ $98.00"

SCORE!

It is at this point that I am assuming I put my "smiling money," as I call it (because of all the smiling I had to do to get someone to throw an extra nickel in the jar) back in my pocket. The reason why I am assuming is because this is where my usual Friday turned into an unusual Friday.

The nutshell version of the story goes something like this...

Tips were distributed at work around 10:45am, right before I got off of work (the only benefit of starting work at 5am is getting off at 11am). I drove over to school to meet with my tutor at 12pm. My tutor and I met for 3 hours and I stayed for an extra hour after he left. I went to the equipment cage at school and checked out a camera for the weekend. I was so stoked about finally getting to take pictures of my stay here in Portland that I was basically skipping on the way back to my car. When I got to my car I put my bookbag in my trunk and decided I would walk around the city to take pictures. I decided to just take the essentials with me... my phone, my wallet and of course (some of) my new stash of cash. When I opened the little brown pastry bag that I thought had my tip money in it, I didn't pull out cash, I pulled out a half eaten snickerdoodle cookie.

You see, before I left work, I had a cookie, and I didn't finish the cookie so I stuck it in a little brown pastry bag (which is where cookies belong, not money) and put it in my bag. I had a few more bites before going to school and just maybe quite possibly I decided I wasn't going to finish the cookie, so I reached into my bag to grab the pastry bag and threw it away.

About 5 hours later, I realized I didn't throw the cookie away.

I immediately jumped in my car and drove back over to work to retrace my steps. I looked everywhere hoping maybe it fell on the floor. The guys that were working said they already took the trash to the dump. I walked back to my car to look again and decided that the dump was not beneath me going through for $98.00.

One of the guys walked me to the dump and even pulled the trash bags out for me, but then left me to search through them. And I did, thoroughly. The worst was when I thought I had found my little brown pastry bag of tip money at least 4 different times because everyone else's little brown pastry bag of tip money was thrown away after they had taken their tips out. Smart.

I dug through coffee grounds, banana peels and plastic cutlery and only found traces of everyone else's trash. I walked back to the store to tell the guys I couldn't find it and to wash my hands for longer than 20 seconds.

While I was washing my hands I saw the parking police making their rounds. I figured I should cut the scrub a few seconds short to spare myself a $34.00 ticket (especially after losing $98.00). Thankfully they were walking in the opposite direction of my car. I ran out and I quickly realized why they were walking in the opposite direction of my car... they had already walked by my car, slapped a ticket on it and kept on walking.

I started to get frustrated and tear up a little bit because I felt like that should be my natural reaction, but for whatever reason I felt remarkably calm. I almost tried to make myself get upset about everything because it just seems like that would be such a normal response, but over and over again I just kept thinking "it's not my money anyway!"

And so, instead of getting upset I just kept repeating to myself "it's not my money anyway." It's still a bummer, for sure, but it didn't ruin my night. I'm not saying it's OK to go around being irresponsible by misplacing money, but I think, for me, I learned that I can't cling to money, which is exactly what I start to do when I start to make it. It's easy to share when you're poor.

While standing on a street corner retracing my steps, I started to accept the fact that I wasn't going to find it. I started to ask God why he couldn't just let me find it, but instead, whether out of manipulation or sincerity or a little of both, I thought about church on Sunday and said "I have nothing to give you."

At that point I didn't audibly hear anything, but as clear as day I heard and I felt God say, "good. I'm not asking you to give me anything. Just spend time with me." I laughed, mostly at myself, for thinking God would want me to find my tip money just so I could tithe on Sunday.

And so instead of continuing my search, I let it go and said out loud "it's not my money anyway!"