High Five

Yesterday a guy about my age sat next to me on the bus and proceeded to pull an enormous wad of cash out of his pockets. It was mostly ones and fives.

Counting your pocketful of bills is a strange thing to do on a very crowded bus, and I found myself curious about where he had been that night. He didn’t look like an exotic dancer. He was kind of dirty and needed to shave, so he also didn’t look like a waiter, and certainly not one that would be taking home so much money on a Thursday.

I’m telling you, it was a huge pile of cash spread out all over his lap. He dropped like six bills on the floor of the bus without noticing. Finally I picked them up and handed them back to him.

“Oh, thanks man,” he said. “High FIVE!” (He didn’t actually high-five me. Just shouted it at me.)

He put all the money away. And then it got weirder.

Because the next thing he pulled out was marijuana. Now, I don’t really know much about marijuana, but it looked like a lot of it to me. And he starts rolling a blunt, on his lap, on the crowded bus.

But at least the large amount of marijuana helps to explain the pile of cash.