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Keep money away from the mower

Mowing the grass is a good feeling, a sense of accomplishment.

Mowing a $20 bill — one that doesn’t even belong to you in the first place — now that’s not such a good feeling, not really cause for celebration on a job well done.

I never know what conversation topics await me when I pull in the driveway, home from another day in my community world of local news papering and such.

But there’s always something interesting or entertaining or unusual to be discussed or debated or decided, thanks to Better Half.

I walked in the house the other day to find him seated at the kitchen table. He was crouched over something he was piecing together with what seemed like modest success despite the intensity of his effort.

“Hello,” I said as I walked in the door, ever so cheerful and super sparkly.

It was obvious to me that I was home but not to him, so focused he was on the job at hand.

“What are you doing?” I asked, trying to sneak a peak.

And so began his tale of mowing woe, how he was giving the grass a cutting, riding along merrily on the John Deere when suddenly he realized he was about to run over a $20 bill.

By the time he is processing this, however, it’s too late.

I’m listening, trying to digest this and picture it all happening in s-l-o-w motion.

I had to stop him there, though, because confusion was setting in, big time on my part.

A $20 bill was in our yard? I wondered aloud.

A $20 bill just hanging out sunbathing or waiting for an Andrew Jackson family reunion or what?

I got “the husband eye,” a combination eye squint and a furrowed brow, a kind of facial exclamation point.

Better Half said it wasn’t his $20 bill.

And we both knew it surely wasn’t mine.

Money I lay claim to has no chance to make its way to a yard. A cash register, yes. A yard? Don’t think so. Not gonna’ happen.

I give a whole new meaning to that saying about money not having a chance to burn a hole in your pocket.

Bills never experience the darkness of my pockets or purse, my wallet, nothing.

So neither of us laid claim to ownership of the $20 bill that miraculously was in the front yard awaiting contact with the lawn mower.

As a result, it got trimmed.

But Better Half responded quickly — $20 being $20 and all — and stopped the mower as fast as he could to collect as best as he could the pieces of the $20 bill.

And that’s why he was so busy at the kitchen table when I came home from work the other day to find him piecing together a $20 bill that didn’t belong to either of us.

It’s not a woebegone looking 20, just missing a tiny little corner section now.

I’ll probably end up taking it to the bank to request an exchange.

And then we’ll split it. Ten for me. Ten for him.

I guess the moral of the story is put your money where your mouth is, not your mower.

(Kiaski, a resident of Richmond, is a staff columnist and features writer for the Herald-Star and The Weirton Daily Times and community editor for the Herald-Star. She can be reached at jkiaski@heraldstaronline.com.)

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