Dollar Bills

I have this unimplemented idea (wouldn't be the only one) about using dollar bills. I want to take twenty bucks worth of one-dollar bills and distribute them one at a time whenever asked. I would like to see what would happen. Maybe nothing.

Each time someone asked me for money (for food, for fare, the church offering basket, tip jars) I'd give them one dollar. Easy experiment, I just need to do it. I'd be testing limited-but-ready generosity to see if it made any difference in my life.

I have an extension for this experiment as well. I got a load of Roald Dahl books from the library because Mitch loves them so much, and the only one I read growing up was Magic Finger. I read Matilda first. (An aside: when the movie came out I was not allowed to watch it because my parents didn't want me getting any ideas. I might have glued my dad's hat to his head or something.) In it, I found not one but two crisply pressed dollar bills!

My idea is to take an additional twenty dollars worth of Washingtons and put one a piece into the children's books that I think are the best. This, of course, to encourage kids to read. A dollar is a lot to a seven-year-old.

One into Matilda, into Island of the Blue Dolphins, into Venus Among the Fishes, into Maniac Magee, into Holes, into Hatchet, into The Light Princess, into Bridge to Terabithia, into The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and into A Wrinkle in Time.