This morning I pulled my pickup into a parking space at a freeway rest stop, and a guy tapped on my window. 

This is not the best way to begin the day.

Best case scenario, he needs directions.

Worst case – I get kidnapped, and my wife counteroffers the ransom demand with, “I’m afraid you’ve got this backward.  How much will you pay me to take him back?”

I rolled down the window, and he shows me a $100 bill and asks in broken English if I have change for it. 

I look over, and some other guy is pouring gas from a plastic jug into the pickup next to mine.  Apparently, Mr. One-Hundred Dollar Bill ran out of gas, and he was buying some from a random stranger. 

(You’ve heard the phrase, “You look like million bucks”?  Apparently, I look like one hundred bucks – in small bills.)

I told the guy sorry.  Perhaps one day I would win the lottery and walk around with change for a $100 bill.  But that day was not today. 

It took me until I had walked into the restroom to take care of my business to realize how ridiculous this was.  

What are the odds that you go up to a stranger and they would have change for a hundred?

Those have got to be LONG odds. 

Maybe better odds asking someone wandering down the Vegas Strip. 

But at an I-5 rest stop?  In rural Oregon?

Gotta say, though.  I marched out of the toilet with my head held just a little higher.  Some guy had looked around that entire parking lot and thought,

That guy.

That guy might have change for a hundred-dollar bill.

Not because I looked rich.

Not because I looked responsible.

But because apparently I looked like a man who was operating well outside of the traditional banking system. 

What’s the old saying?

Fake it till you make it.

I swaggered back to my F-150, and with my head held at a jaunty angle, cruised off down the road. 

THE END

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