I’ve been thinking lately about the dollar bills passing through my hand and wallet. They have their own personal history of which I willingly and unwillingly participate when I accept them from someone and before I pass them on to someone else.
I am a link in the chain of the history of a dollar bill. But what is that history?
Today I sat in my easy chair, with a glass of red wine by my side to keep me company, and pondered this question for hours… I looked deeply into my wallet and saw the history of the stained and crinkled dollar bill that stared out at me…
That dollar bill left the mint and was sent to a bank in New York City where it was accepted by a tourist, a German, who was exchanging euros for dollars. That German tourist was a bit of a perv and took the dollar to the seedy part of town and stuffed it into the g-string of a lap dancer.
The lap dancer, at the end of the evening, tugged that dollar out of her g-string and used it to pay a cabbie for a ride home.
Later that night the cabbie gave that dollar as change to a D-List Reality TV celebrity whom he dropped off at the airport. The D-List Reality TV celebrity, upon landing in Los Angeles, used that dollar as part of her purchase of drugs from a cabbie/drug dealer who took her from the airport to her dilapidated house in the seedy section of Beverly Hills.
Later that night the cabbie/drug dealer used the dollar to purchase a cup of coffee at an all night diner in Eagle Rock. The poor old waitress was tired, after working a double shift, and spilled coffee on the dollar when she tried sliding the dollar off the table while also grabbing the used coffee mug.
The next morning I stopped at the diner for a doughnut and a coffee. The same waitress was back at work for another double shift, and gave me the dollar as change when I paid with a twenty.
The same fingers I used to stuff that dollar in my wallet I used to touch the doughnut. Being the doughnut-holic that I am, I licked the remnants of the doughnut from my fingers for a lasting mmm, mmm good.
Cough. Cough. Cough.
Oh no… The germs and specks of DNA from the German tourist, the lap dancer, the NY cabbie, the D-List Reality TV celebrity, the LA cabbie/drug dealer, and the overworked old waitress are now part of me.
Oh no! Oh no! Oh no!
I have to leave now and make an emergency trip to the drugstore and use that dollar to purchase Purell, mouthwash, and plastic gloves, and then I’m heading to the clinic for a throat culture.
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