When I was younger I received five dollars a week for being a good boy. I don't think I was a good boy, I should've probably gotten 3.75$ after calculating damages, swear words, lies etc. Never the less I saved my money to buy a hamster, yes, a hamster. All I really knew was that at the mall there was a cheap red marker sign at the pet store that said, "Hamsters 40$." I remember going up the escalator and seeing them all, they looked like little piglets. Assuming my math is correct I waited a whole two months before I had enough, and I had all the money stored away in a small teal and black Grizzlies (basketball team) velcro wallet.
I don't remember what day it was that I realized the money was gone. I just remember misplacing the wallet sometime, and finding it on the pink single seater couch in the living room that no one ever sits in. There was no money left in it. For some reason I didn't care, I was nonchalant about it, like I never cared and the money never existed. The wallet ended up in the basement with all my other childhood things and has stayed there ever since.
Yesterday I woke up to the smell of pancakes and I went downstairs to see them getting cold. I flopped two onto a plate and buttered them up. There was no syrup and I got tired of spraying what little of it there was left onto my pancakes, so I went into the basement to get more.
Our pantry is really sad, its just a metal shelf with canned goods and Vienna sausages piled in rag tag order. I took my time to look it over, there was no syrup. But I spotted the Grizzly wallet on the shelf next to it.
I had a huge inclination to check the wallet, to see if my 40$ hamster money was still in it, but I think that now that I'm older and money seems to mean so much more to me, that I couldn't bare to see absolutely nothing in it. I did pick it up, test out the velcro, even pinched it stupidly to feel for what contents it might of accumulated over the past 12 years. I just put it back exactly where I found it, made my way upstairs, forgot to turn off the basement light, and ate my pancakes with honey instead. Why can't money be a side effect of a good life and not a prerequisite?
