Like Common Sense, Honesty at the Bank Did Develop!

In case I haven't whined to you directly, I am sick. I have an awesome cold that is playing around at coming on. Normally I would be just fine with it not really hitting. But then I have a fever of 102. Awesome.

Because I didn't get out of bed until 11 this morning, Aiden took pity on the kids who had played so quietly until then. He took them out for McDonald's, the library, and Lick's for ice cream. I got to lay on the couch and feel sorry for myself while watching movies and accomplishing NOTHING. It was great.

On the way home from their 4 hours of fun they stopped at Blockbuster to drop off movies. On the ground Aiden found nineteen dollars. So he turned it in to the people at Blockbuster. He told the kids what happened and why we don't keep the money we find on the sidewalk. They talked about how you probably can keep a dollar because people don't come back for a dollar but you don't keep nineteen dollars because that might be some student's budget for food for a week. Or something. It's all fairly lost on the kids anyway so...

We were talking about it again tonight and I was reminded of a primary activity we had one Saturday when I was little. There were a bunch of different stations or something set up, I don't remember exactly. What I do know is in one room there was a bank set up and everyone was to withdraw one dollar from the bank. And those primary women were baiting us all by handing out TWO to each kid. All the kids were being honest and giving it back.

Then my class got there. We had to have the worst average of all the classes. Maybe it was the age, maybe it was individuals, I don't know, but no one tried to give it back. Our poor teacher had to block the door to the room so we couldn't get out until we gave back our money.

In fairness to myself, I hadn't counted my money, just assumed the bank was doing their job. When it was pointed out to me, THEN I tried to keep it. But I got into that predicament halfway through it. Really.

As we talked about it tonight I laughed and said it was probably a sign of what kind of person I'd be in life. And then I remembered another little bank story about me:

A couple of years ago US Bank made a deposit of like six grand into my account. "all right!" was my first thought. I let it sit there for a couple of weeks figuring whoever DID make the deposit would be sure to notice what happened, the bank would pull the records, realize where it went and fix it. It never happened. Then I was talking to a friend about it and they said that the bank will eventually find it and charge me money for having had it. And apparently if there is money in your account that you don't immediately report as not yours, it's a federal crime.

I don't know how true that all is, but it was scary enough to get me to call my branch. I had to argue with the teller that it was, in fact, not my money. I mean, if they want to gift it to me for reals, GREAT! but I'm not taking it like this. I had to pull up a copy of the deposit slip on the Internet and tell the teller what account it WAS supposed to be in.

He finally got it out of my account. I don't know where it ended up but it is not my fault. I had to go in and sign a paper saying I was the one reporting it.

And then they credited me $5 for the mistake on my account.