One Hundred Dollars

Ameer Forte            One Hundred Dollars

One hundred bucks is crazy money in my book, and on this very day last summer my mom had gave me a one hundred dollar bill for my 8th grade graduation. I’m in tenth grade now but I still remember doing everything with that dollar. It felt like I had that thing for forever too, I mean like I said I did everything with it, took it camping, to the beach, to the pool, to the park. This all of course was stupid, my mom did always tell me “keep it home Ameer, thats a lot of money.”

Yeah yeah I know it was a lot of money, but what good was one hundred bucks if I just had to leave it home all the time. I mean i’m not an idiot, I knew better than to go around showing it off like some 1st place trophy, I just wanted to, you know hold it in my wallet and feel that rich feeling of “I got one hundred dollars in my pocket”. So, over the summer I had taken it everywhere, to work, to the park, to grandma’s, I figured I had nothing to worry about except if someone would’ve mugged me or something but I had that covered. Every day I carried a three inch pocket blade in my sock and I swore if anyone stepped to me funny they would have a three inch deep slit in there eyeball. Fortunately that was never necessary, but when school started back up I became a paranoid animal.

I remember the first day of Highschool like it was yesterday. My best friend Tony, who had knew about the hundred dollars when I got it, met me at my house. School was like a block or two away so we just walked that day. I remember him saying something like, “Yo dogg it’s the first day of highschool. Ya mean playa, this day decides who's who and what's what, is you hype or naw.” And in my mind I’m just wondering why he sounds like a popular rap song from 2002. No I wasn’t hype, I was more anxious than anything. Plus there was a lot going through my mind that morning, like which pocket would be the safest to hold my wallet that was definitely more important to me than the stupid first day of school. I responded anyway though.

“No, I’m not hype. Why should I be it’s just the first day of school, and stop talking like that, you sound like Snoop Dogg.” After I said that he just talked even weirder to get on my nerves, I just remember ignoring him until he asked,

“Yo, you heard that?” I hadn’t heard anything except his big mouth that whole walk so I don’t know how he thought I could’ve heard anything else. I asked him what he was talking about, instinctively checked my back left pocket to see if my wallet was still there and, it wasn’t.

“Shit. Are you kidding me! Yo dude did you see a little black wallet anywhere around here while we been walking?”

“Nah man, don’t tell me you dropped it.”

Yup I had dropped it, and boy was I pissed. I texted my mom telling her I lost my wallet and she gave me the normal that’s what you get, I’m very disappointed crap. Whatever, I had just lost one hundred bucks I didn’t freakin’ care how disappointed she was. I just went to school mad. I went to class mad. I ate lunch mad, I even remember punching this short stubby fat kid with no shoulders in the mouth because he wouldn’t stop saying “Hotdogs”. And man do I feel bad about that, but were all good now I think I eventually bought him a hotdog or something. My mom had to come me up from school but didn’t seem all that upset during the ride I guess it was because she had an excuse to leave work early but that didn’t stop her from putting me on a three month punishment when we got home. So I sat there in my room just staring at the walls and I spotted a little green strip with 100 on the corners and I’m pretty sure the last thing I said that day was, “You’ve got to be kidding me!”.