Sure, that title sounds like hyperbole and clickbait, but I assure you that it’s true. This piece by Island Books bookseller and nwbooklover columnist James Crossley tells the story of a dollar bill, a holiday season, and what can happen when you trust.
The Christmas season is over, but we can’t let go of that cheery holiday feeling without telling one last story of peace on earth and good will toward humankind.
To set the scene properly, we have to look backward a fair bit, past Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, and even Thanksgiving, almost all the way to last Halloween. In the early days of November, Cindy, our display maven, came up with a nifty way to highlight our 2016 calendars (still a few of those left for procrastinators, by the way). She strung a clothesline across the store and pinned a bunch of the prettiest ones to it. In the small spaces between the bigger items she hung some toys and other gifts, and in the last narrow spot she pinned a single dollar bill. Kind of a visual pun on “money laundering” for the keenly observant, she thought.
Almost immediately the cynics spoke up. “Why not hang a sign that says ‘Free Money’?” they said. “You’re practically inviting someone to steal it,” they told her. And so an office pool was born. On a handy napkin, Cindy scribbled the date each staff member thought would be the dollar’s last. (Well, she might have thought of it as scribbling. Her sloppiest penmanship is a model to which the rest of us can only aspire.) Predictions for its life expectancy ranged from low to lower, mostly. The most pessimistic among us didn’t expect to see it survive the day. . .
Read the whole heartwarming story on the Island Books blog. With the post about reparations from yesterday, we’ve started off the new year in a very positive way, wouldn’t you say?