Lost and Found

It was my twelfth birthday, and what I really wanted most was a new bicycle. A blue lowrider with fat tires. But I knew that my family couldn't afford one. My parents said that I should be happy that I had a bicycle at all, if you can call that rickety old thing that I own a bike.

A new bike was just a dream, so I settled for a nightstand. I figured that at least I would have a safe place to keep my private stuff away from the reach of my younger brothers. So, I asked my parents for a nightstand with lockable drawers. And that's what I got.

We went to the secondhand furniture store and found an old dark brown nightstand. It didn’t look cool, but at least it had drawers that I could keep locked. I could paint it and draw some designs on it to make it look better.

After we took the nightstand home and I pulled the drawers out to paint it, I felt something stuck to the bottom of a drawer. I bet you can’t guess what I found. A plastic bag with some papers in it.

‘Wow, maybe I’ve found somebody’s secret stuff!’ I thought. When I opened the bag, I realized that the papers were official-looking documents. And, stuffed among the papers were a bunch of ten and twenty dollar bills! Talk about finding a treasure! On my birthday!

‘Is this some kind of joke?’ I said aloud. Maybe my family was playing a trick on me. Maybe this was fake money. But it looked real. Somebody had been stashing money in this bag and hiding it under the locked drawer. I went ahead and read the papers, and it turned out to be a will. An old lady was leaving her savings to her son and grandchildren.

All this was too weird. My mind was going crazy. Was I the luckiest twelve-year-old ever? With this money I could buy the coolest bicycle. I could even buy bicycles for my brothers. Who knows? Maybe I even had enough here to get a car for my parents, so that they could trash that embarrassing old junker that we have for a car.

‘Finders keepers, losers weepers,’ I started singing as I began counting the money. When I reached a thousand dollars, I had to stop. My mother was knocking on my bedroom door. I quickly closed the drawer with the money in it.

‘How is the painting job coming along? Do you need help?’

‘No… thanks, Mom, I haven’t even started. I’ll let you know when it’s ready.’

‘Is everything alright?’ she asked.

No, everything was not right. Actually, my stomach was growling.

‘I’m okay,’ I lied. ‘I’ll let you know when it’s ready.’ 

When my mother left the bedroom, I laid on my bed, staring at the ceiling. I started thinking about his past week. First, I didn't make the basketball team. Then, I flunked the math test. Finally, my little brother destroyed my science project. That’s why I needed a nightstand with locked drawers. And now I found this money on my birthday, the only good news in a long time. A solution to my problems. Yet, I didn't feel good about keeping it or using it. How come?

I would have to make up lies to tell my family and friends. ‘Finders keepers…’ the saying goes. But that money wasn’t really meant for me, was it? The lady had been saving it for her family. She probably died and nobody knew about the money hidden in the nightstand. Her family donated it to the secondhand store, and now it was in my hands.

What a dilemma! I could keep it and get stuff for me and my family. It wouldn’t be too bad for me to keep it if I shared it, right? I bargained with myself. What about keeping some and returning the rest? After all, nobody knew how much money was there. And it was my birthday! Or I could give it all back. Tell the truth. No new bicycles. No car.

‘Somebody help me with this!’ I pleaded. But I really didn’t need anyone to tell me what to do. I already knew right from wrong. That’s why I flunked the math test even though I could have cheated. So, I decided not to flunk this test. It was a test of honor. My honor.

I called my parents and my brothers into my bedroom and showed them what I had found. They were wide-eyed, speechless! When they asked, ‘What should we do about this?’ I already had the answer.

‘Let’s take it back to the store and find the family.’ As I said this, my stomach quieted down.

The store employees couldn’t believe it when we told them what had happened.

‘You mean to say that you found over a thousand dollars in cash, and you are here to return it?’ they asked, incredulous.

Looking through their donation records, the manager found the family’s phone number. She called them right there and then, and within a few minutes they came over to the store: the son, his wife, and their three children, a family pretty much like ours. The parents had tears in their eyes. The old lady’s oldest grandson just kept looking at me.

You see, they were still sad about having lost Grandma. And the father had just lost his job. They had been praying for help, and it turned out that I brought in the answer to their prayers. My act of honesty not only helped them pay the rent but strengthened their faith and gave them hope.

I had never felt better. No new bicycle would have made me feel as good about myself as I felt on that day. I may have flunked the math test, but I passed a more important one, a lost and found test of my own character.

(An earlier version of this story has been published in Chicken Soup for the Soul 2, and in children’s magazines.)