Money Roll

I’ve been getting a lot of double takes from cashiers lately and it has nothing to do with my incredibly handsome face.

All I have to do is take out my wallet and I become a retail sensation.

“That’s so cool!”

“I’ve never seen anything like that before!”

And what’s been the cause of all this excitement?

My wallet.

Yeah, cashiers see a lot of wallets in the course of a day, but they don’t see too many like mine.

This wallet is light years away the traditional black or brown items I’ve been lugging around since high school. This is—product placement alert!—the Mighty Wallet and it looks like…money.

Seriously, it’s like some Texas oilman went off the deep end and fashioned a wallet out of his petty cash.

It’s got George Washington’s mug shot and all the serial numbers and signatures, though if you look closely it says “One Half” instead of One Dollar.

I treated myself to Mighty Wallet after the old Italian job I’ve been carrying for the last seven years was starting to look seriously busted.

I tend to abuse my wallets, treating them more like steamer trunks than billfolds. I stuff them until they’re ready to bust with receipts, ticket stubs, credit cards, the Encyclopedia Britannica, hell, you could probably find a couple of dead mobsters at the bottom of one of my wallets.

Things got so bad that a TSA agent at the San Francisco Airport laughed when he asked to see my driver’s license.

“Big wallet,” he chuckled.

I knew this couldn’t go on much longer, but I could never muster enough interest to go out and shop for a wallet. Isn’t that something your aunt gives you for Christmas?

Cash & Carry

Inspiration finally came to me when I saw the wallet of my dreams in the window of a funky little gift shop on Lexington Avenue.

It was silly, it was unnecessary, and in some circles, it might even be deemed to be unprofessional.

Naturally, I had to have it.

I went inside and meandered a bit, weighing the costs and the ramifications, and the phases of the moon, the price of wheat, and the average mean temperature of Kalamazoo before I finally committed myself and bought the goddamn thing.

According to the company website, the Mighty Wallet is made from a single folded sheet of a strong micro fiber material that is “tear and water resistant, super strong and incredibly long lasting.”

There’s no stitching and the wallet instantly adjusts to a custom fit. It can certainly handle all the crap I’ve been stuffing into it, like business cards from people I haven’t seen in 20 years.

But the best thing has been the reaction from cashiers. It really seems to brighten their day.

“I’ve never seen that before,” one fellow at a restaurant said to me. “A wallet made out of money.”

A woman at the local Home Depot was beside herself when I reached for my credit card.

“Wow, that’s a great wallet!” she said.

Even my boss did a double take when he saw the Mighty Wallet. Now I know I’ve hit the jackpot.

The lady who owns a Middle Eastern deli in my neighborhood was surprised when she saw it, but she pointed out that criminal types might see my Mighty Wallet and think I was actually lugging around a wad of cash.

And then they’d be mighty upset when they found out that they’d been had.

“A lot of crazy people around,” she said.

The only other problem is that the inside of this thing looks like money, too, so sometimes I have to squint to see just how much cash I’m actually carrying. But it’s a small price to pay.

I’m loving my new wallet. It’s just a silly little item but it seems to make people smile and that’s worth more than gold.