No, the story itself isn’t worth 50 dollars, the story itself involves 50 dollars.
I’ve thought about this story recently, and I see that I don’t appear to have a record of it online already, which is odd. But anyway, here’s the best that I can remember the story right now. It is always a painful ordeal trying to reconcile conflicting memories of the past with friends, so I’ll say mine is definitive in all ways except in the ways that it isn’t.
Anyway, this occured many years ago, when I was in 1A in University, or actually, it was probably in my work term at Schneiders in between 1A and 1B. I was with 5 other friends, not all of whom I can recall, so I won’t bother giving a list. But I beleive there were six of us total, and also, I know most definitely we were at Mel’s, a diner in Waterloo.
We were there, in a booth, 3 on each side, eating an late (or very early morning) breakfast I beleive. I don’t know about anyone else, but I do recall seeing a strange man in a booth further back, but I didn’t pay him much mind, until he approached us. Given the noise, my position in the booth, and my general inability to pick a voice out of anything but silence, I couldn’t quite make out what he was saying. Then he put down six 50 dollar bills, one for each of us. And after some discussion afterwards, everyone putting together what they had heard (apparently I wasn’t the only one who had trouble understanding him) he had told us to find some person to give the money to, and gave a name (which actually had two derivations that I recall between us, and we later could find neither in phone books or the university directory). If we should fail to find the person, he said, we were to keep the money, as he said he knew we were poor university students. But, he also said, if we found this person, we should tell them the numbers 6, 3, 1, and that they would understand (my mind was disconnecting from this point). Finally, one of the things that came out of our notes on the encounter, was that he said that he didn’t like men for one reason or another, okay, jolly good.
He then left the restaurant, sort of shoo’ed away by a waiter. Who then told us to just take the money and not make a fuss about it. That last bit struck me as odd, it’s like he was trying to avoid a scene or something, when a scene in a half empty diner late at night is hardly devestating for them, hell, I’ve had friends vomit over their tables. The waiter then told us that he was in earlier, gave a waitress some really large tip (in the hundreds) and just not to worry about it and to stay calm, etc, etc.
Anyway, out of the six people, I am the last, as far as I know, to still have the fifty. One person I beleive gave theirs to charity some time later, another beleives they accidentally spent it thinking it was one of their own fifty’s. Mine is still in my wallet, like decoration, like the condom. I don’t know if I will ever get rid of it before it disintegrates, it’s a fixture.
As is this story.
