This was several years ago, and I
remember it only because it was
one of those things. It was a cool
autumn morning as I walked up to the little outdoor coffee stand to get a hot
cocoa.
My best friend's younger
sister worked there so we'd get a chance to say hello while she frooshed the milk with the milk-froosher thing.
"How are you?" I'd say.
"I'm good." she'd say over the noise of the shiny Italian machine. "You?"
"Can't complain."
"How's my brother?" she'd ask, not looking at me.
"You should call him." I'd say (yet again).
"He doesn't want to talk to me..." she'd say.
(My friend, her brother, would sometimes say the same thing about her.)
Anyway, as the frooshing continued I took a crumpled dollar from the front pocket of my jeans and tried to smooth it out — you know, make it more presentable — on the little "here's-your-drink" counter. As I did, I noticed that I had laid the dollar in some rings of water on the counter.
"Damn", I thought "first it was only crumpled, but now it's crumpled and wet."
I picked the bill up off of the counter and lay it against my left pant leg, trying to smooth the wetness off.
"You'll never be able to dry it." a voice stated from behind me.
"Huh?" I said, turning around to see the man behind me, evidently grabbing a coffee on his way to work
"The American Dollar is forever soaked with the blood of others." he finished.
"Oh... kay..." I thought to myself, and turned noiselessly back to the counter.
Note: I know, this isn't really a "story" as the node title would suggest, but it is one of those "only-took-a-couple-of-seconds" things that you (I) still remember years later so I felt like sharing it. Besides, I've been doing a lot of "not-noding" as of late — that is, thinking of something and wanting to node it, but then stopping myself saying "no, that's not good enough" — so I figured "aww, to hell with it... submit it". That said, I did figure that adding to this write up was better than creating a new node for such a parsley of text.