Hundred Dollar Smile

The dogs and I trudged up our hill on an 85 degree day. We all needed to get out. I was chatting with a friend on the phone, having returned from a trip of nearly three weeks.

I spotted a bill lying on the side of the road, slightly curled up, and swaying in the considerable breeze.

I picked it up and noted Ben Franklin’s grimace on the front and exclaimed to my friend, “oh my God, I’ve found a $100 bill!” I tucked it into my little bag, and kept walking, not seeing anyone on the road at all. On my country road people do walk/run/walk dogs, but it was hard to fathom people strolling around with hundred dollar bills lining their pockets.

But who knows? I was happy to find it and I smiled at my unexpected fortune. 

When I arrived home I triumphantly showed my husband the crisp bill. He glanced at it and said. “It’s fake. It says COPY right here.” What? It took him three seconds to crush my nascent dream of dinner out somewhere fun. We flipped the bill over and noted the top line “For Motion Pictures Purposes: and beneath that “In Prop We Trust.” That made me chuckle. Easy come, easy fake. 

“It doesn’t feel like a real bill, either,” my husband remarked. He was right; it was too smooth, too flat, different than a bill fresh out of an ATM machine.

Ah, well. I had to laugh at my inattention to the critical details when I picked up the bill. It might have been different if I weren’t already multi-tasking by walking the hounds and talking on the phone.

My post of the fakie fake generated a variety of responses, from “You should report it to the police” (nah, no one was deliberately trying to fool me) to “Dang” to “Still fun to find it.” Yes, it was! Also, “Are they filming in your area?” I thought they meant that candid camera was nearby ready to capture my reaction, but now I’m realizing that it was likely a genuine question, as it could have come from an actual movie set.

I have scrutinized Ben’s green hued face (so au current with Wicked) and noted his look of concern, and tight smile, as if to say, “look carefully.” And now that I do, I see it also says “This is not a legal tender” and again in tinier script to his left “Not legal tender, purpose Prof movie money, used for Movie Game.

The font is so believable, I hadn’t read it closely before. Like words with letters left out, the mind fills in what it expects (hopes) to read. We are masters at seeing what we want to see, and I fell hard for my apparent windfall. I have always needed to balance my gullibility with an occasional dash of cynicism. I’m grateful that I did not try to pay for anything with that playful bill: that would have been an embarrassment more difficult to live down. Or perhaps it would have resulted in an even more entertaining story, but I’m happy to have avoided that particular opportunity.

I learned that a week later there were hundreds of dollar bills released onto the road in the middle of Martha’s Vineyard. This caused a traffic backup as people stopped to pick up the bills. Only to learn that they were not real, either.

Two weeks later, I’m still looking at that bill and I smile every time. It seems to have provided some inspiration of possibility and creativity. I can’t seem to get rid of it, and I’m appreciating the symbol that it represents. It is generating much more thought than a real $100 bill. Perhaps I’m justifying my preference, but I am certainly getting my $100 worth of entertainment. I hope there’s more.