I also had a five, and that was accepted without complaint, but she gave me an accusatory look as she handed me my change. I glanced over my shoulder as I walked out of the store, and the customers in line behind me were also glaring at me - a dirty counterfeiter.
But I'm not a dirty counterfeiter, and I can prove it. Here's the ten I tried to spend.
Looks okay, but yeah, it does seem a little different. Then I spotted the date.
1969? That's the year I was born! No wonder the clerk was suspicious. This came out 21 years before the first security strip was woven into US currency. And if she wasn't living in the States in the 70's and 80's, that clerk probably hasn't seen this style of bill.
According to the Federal Reserve, the life span of a ten-dollar bill is 4.2 years. So where has Mr. Hamilton been hanging out for the last 44 years? And how did he get in my billfold?
I don't think he was in a numismatist's collection. Hamilton isn't in perfect condition; he's just really flat. I suspect he had a at least a few months in the wild. But where did Hamilton go then?
Was he:
Inside a birthday card lost behind the bedroom dresser?
A bookmark in an unfinished novel?
Under Grandma's mattress?
Kidnapped and held in solitary confinement in a hotel room for 15 years, and then released for five days to wreak revenge on his captors? (Opps, that's the plot to the first Oldboy film.)
I don't know. But I bet he's pretty happy to back in circulation, and that's why I'm not going to hang onto him. I'm tempted to keep a fellow 44-year-old around the house, it's the collector in me, but that wouldn't be fair. I can't put him right back into captivity.
So don't worry, buddy.
I'll set you free.
But where? Where should Mr. Hamilton start his next journey?
I have an idea.
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