What’s the coolest thing you’ve ever found (and kept)?
We were walking to school one morning when my friend Robert and I spotted a single banknote sitting on the footpath. No one else was around. To two eight-year-olds, it looked like a fortune — about fifty dollars in today’s money.
We hesitated. We could have split it there and then, or filled our pockets with ice blocks and trading cards. But something about that didn’t feel right. So we picked it up, walked to the school office, and explained what we’d found. They told us to come back after a few days, just in case someone claimed it.
No one did. When we returned, they said it was ours to keep, so we split it between us.
The note is long gone, of course. But the moment has stayed — the quiet satisfaction of honesty, the warmth of sharing, the sense that doing the right thing matters most when no one’s watching. Those were the real things we kept.
The Afterword 
Leave a comment