The Giving Trees

THE GIVING TREE

I found the first ten dollar bill in the parking lot. Walking the dog every day, it wasn't the first time I'd found a bill strewn around. I only found the discovery odd after founding a second one. Then a twenty dollar bill. Soon I was rummaging around the lot finding dollar bills in all sizes, and they kept growing bigger in value. At last I found the first hundred. Then more. There were only a few cars in the lot, and no other people. Any way, we were all on the same trip, staying in cabins in the mountains for easter. We all knew each other, though not necessarily well.

I had tried to pick up as much as I could when my father joined me. Some of the bills were in bits, but I'd already stopped picking up the tens that were torn, that wasn't necessary any more. We were concentrating on the bigger bills. I was nearing our apartment, and realized the bills must come from there. Warily, I went inside. All our and our neighbors doors very more or less open all the time here in the middle of this touristy mountain heaven. I soon realized that one of the small house plants there were so many of were the source of all the bills. I started a bit frantically searching through more of them. There were curiously many plants, considering these were generic rental apartments. I soon discovered which of the plants were the source of all this money. Having no clue about plants I could only recognize them by their looks, and not by name. They were small, in pots, kind of like small christmas trees. There were a few who stood out, being in different shaped pots and clearly of another kind. I couldn't see the bills growing on the trees, but I had to look away and when looking back again new bills had materialized like magic.

Later, when more people and families were in on our discovery, the hunt had taken on a kind of frantic desperation to it. At the same time as we were overjoyed, we were all clearly dreading the same thing; that the plants would stop producing bills, and we would be left there with our big stack, though looking smaller every moment, of 100, 50, 20 and 10 dollar bills. Me, along with a few others tried to make it very clear the money were not to be used for anything yet. It might seem like we already had a lot, but knowing how money works I knew they would be gone in a blink of an eye if we first started using them. At this time, there were not much sense to the chaos, and bills were strewn around. I myself, along with a few of the other adults were holding strict control of plants at this time, while we had search parties looking through the other houses for more. So far there was a sense of cooperation, although the people in on it were in a way separated into two camps, one of quiet desperation for the plants not to stop producing, the other deliriously happy over all this money coming out of nowhere.

The second fraction found it a great idea to take all our dogs, including children, to the spa. Not the dog spa, the people spa, where they ran up an enormous bill mostly because of the cleaning that had to be done afterwards.

Later in the evening, after I'd done a round of checking on plants and plant-watching people, I decided to pop into the shared living room of one of the other families. To my horror, I found a whole two story wall decked from top to bottom in state of the art stereo equipment. In front of it I found two of the teens that were with us on the trip propped up in their chairs wearing giant 1000-dollar headphones.

Obviously, this could not end well. The lurking feeling I'd had since I first discovered that me finding a couple of 10 dollar bills on the ground was not a one time coincidence, now came into full bloom. The money would soon be spent faster than the plants could grow new bills. How could so many in our group overlook this problem? It was not as if I could grab the plants and keep them all to myself.

Not that I would have if I'd had the opportunity. It was just that the money was growing so fast and in so many places that I didn't have any way to hide it when people started coming back from the slopes. As we were also living a bit on top of each other, adults, children and dogs walking in and out of each others apartments all the time, there was nowhere to hide.