Day in the Life of an Idiot

 Continuing the theme of random observations.

Yesterday was a day of errands for me. I made my son be my "come-along friend" and together, we picked up and dropped off some things for our (very active!) neighborhood "Buy Nothing Group." Then, we stopped at Target for the kinds of things you get at that kind of catch-all store, mostly bits and baubs. Then, I stopped at the post office because I had a couple of snail mail letters to friends that I thought might be just over an ounce. Plus, I was out of international forever stamps.  

The Post Offiice that I go to services Midway--my neighborhood. Again, for people not familiar with Minneapolis/St. Paul, Midway is a neighborhood in St. Paul. Midway contains one of the busiest intersections in the Twin Cities and is generally very culturally diverse. Little Africa  and a stadium named after a Nazi are probably our biggest draws for outsiders, but it's also... industrial and a bit rundown. Our Hamline-Midway Facebook group has unofficially adopted the possum as our neighborhood mascot and we routinely track "the" Midway possum wherever she goes. So, that's it in a nutshell: my neighborhood is a possum. Kind of trashy, but beneficial. North America's only marsupial, probably carrying too many children. Known for looking dead and attracting flies. Screams. Cute in the right light, if you like that sort of weird cat.

So, I'm standing in line with a whole bunch of people and I can see that there's a guy at the counter with a comedically LARGE stack of one dollar bills that he's converting into a money order. To be fair to him, it's not just a stack of ones he has. He's clearly planning to pay some big bills like rent or mortgage with this money, because there's a fist full of hundreds and stacks of all denominations. 

My first thought seeing this was two-fold. First thought: Oh, right. This is why people used to rob post offices. Right on the heels of first, second thought: Wow, people still use money orders? Third thought: How is that pile so neat and orderly? How does it not fall over? (Pretty sure the answer to this last one is: it had been through one of those counting machines banks have.)

Then, I had a final, much longer, lingering question/thought: What kind of .job do you suppose this guy has that he ends up with that quantity of one dollar bills, and, like, probably doesn't have a checking account??

Because this stack of ones? It was easily six inches high--it was a truly ludicrious number of bills. 

My first guess was--tips? But, again, followed by, yeah, but wouldn't a restaurant job be the sort of place where you'd be paid steadily enough that you'd probably have a checking accont and thus be less likely to need a money order? My second thought, which seemed far more plausible was: food truck. A LOT of food trucks around here will take Venmo or credit cards or whatever, but some of them don't. So, maybe this guy runs one of those "cash only" food trucks. This is not exactly food truck weather right now in Minnesota, but Mason and I did actually see a food truck which was in business while we were out doing our errands so some people are still running them despite the cold weather.  And there are often foods at those where you sell a small order of whatever for a couple of bucks. 

I mean, I'd say drug dealer, but weed is legal now in Minnesota and I can't imagine that other, harder drugs are going for a couple of dollars a pop. Although what do I know? I am about the cleanest nerd in the history of clean nerds. What does ecstasy go for these days?

There are, of course, plenty of people who have itinerant jobs. They just go to the job center and get farmed off to do roofing work or other unskilled labor, but those places wouldn't pay you for the day IN ONES, would they??

And, you know, this is absolutely "none of my business." I don't really care what this guy does for a living, no judgement at all--but it was just a FASCINATING amount of cash on display.