Imagine this place. You are in a beautiful paradise. Looking straight ahead, all you see is blue. The shiny, blue lake reflecting the clear sky, and the mountains caressing the edges of the big pool. As you dig your toes into the rough sand beneath you, you feel the warmth of the tiny rocks hugging your feet. The cool breeze brushes your hair off your shoulder as you lift your head up to the sky. Quiet and tranquility overcomes you as you start to drift off into a light slumber. Once every year, this is my escape. Just as you are about to take a nap on the warm sand, you are suddenly overwhelmed and shaken by a loud revving sound. You sit up, and notice a water skier passing by. It is a small girl, looking fully concentrated on her balance as she is being pulled behind the boat. Also you notice a speed boat in the distance, a big blown up floatation device kids are jumping on, and a couple of sea-doo’s rushing by as well. The lake is occupied and shared by so many people because there are so many residential lake houses around here. Sometimes I feel that it could get too crowded if everyone had their boat out for the day. As you get lost in your own thoughts, you get distracted by how stunning the view is. Admiring and taking in the beautiful scene, you close your eyes and ask yourself one thing: “Why don’t I live here?”
Finding money in the most unintentional places feels great. When I was really young, money was just an antique that I would stash in my glass piggy bank and never take out. But now, and I’m sure I speak for a lot of people, it‘s even hard to keep it in your wallet before buying clothes, bags and shoes because of how marketed today’s society is. Don’t get me wrong, I manage my money really well and make sure I don’t spend it all at once. But as sad as this sounds, whenever I get a twenty dollar bill, I feel like I’m the richest person in the world sometimes. One casual day at school, I was in science class where we were doing some sort of project that I can’t remember with different colored liquids in flasks. Just in the midst of doing the experiment, my lab partner accidentally tipped over one of the flasks and our desk was soaked with some sort of mystery fluid. So, I had to go get some wet paper towel from the bathroom to wipe it up. While in the bathroom, I grabbed the handle to the paper towel dispenser and a little folded up piece of paper fell down onto the counter. At first glance, it was a colorful and shiny piece of paper but as I unfolded it with curiosity as to what it was, it was a twenty dollar bill. ‘Who would even think to leave a perfect twenty dollar bill in the bathroom?’ Someone had obviously left it there on purpose because of how it was folded and perfectly placed in the crease of the handle of the paper towel machine. Finding money that you unknowingly had feels great.
