So me and my wife had been saving up to pay for our @Utah_Football tickets in cash. We pulled our money out yesterday to pay my mom for the season... Well we couldn’t find the envelope until my wife checked the shredder. Yup. 2 year old shredded $1,060. pic.twitter.com/93R9BWAVDE— BB (@Benbelnap) October 2, 2018
Via "A 2-year-old shredded $1,060 of his family’s cash. His mom cried — until she laughed" (WaPo). Strangely, these people are better off. They got their cute-kid story in the press. They got offered free football tickets, and:
The Bureau of Engraving and Printing... has an entire “Mutilated Currency Division,” which is devoted to “redeeming” burned, waterlogged, chemically altered, rodent-chewed or deteriorated money — a free service to the public. It handles approximately 30,000 claims per year, redeeming more than $30 million in mutilated cash, according to its website....ADDED: When I was a child, my Uncle Henry gave me and my brother a 5-dollar bill for raking his leaves. I took it to my father and asked if he could split it for us. My father took the bill and tore it in half and gave me the 2 halves. That made a huge impression on me at the time, when I had no idea that the money was not destroyed. You always hear about parents who want to teach their kids about "the value of a dollar." My father taught me something else. Not sure what. But he did it with a smile and thought it was pretty damned funny.
AND: I know what it taught. You just have to focus for a second to get it. It's that money isn't that important and don't take everything so seriously. You can have fun with stuff, impishly. Including money, and including language. I did tell him to split it. Sometimes by taking language seriously (i.e., literally), you end up with something funny.
