A man walks into a bar.... Ouch.
No, but seriously. Imagine this: A man walks into a bar. It’s your typical Saturday afternoon—the sun is shining, birds are chirping, the flowers are in bloom. Yadda yadda yadda.
The perpetual smell of stale beer lingers in the dingy bar. You see, he’s a regular here and has been ever since he can remember. Saturday afternoon happy hour is a tradition for our man. It allows him to reflect, relax and, most importantly, talk sports with the bartenders who all know him by name.
“How ‘bout them Blue Devils?” he always asks with a grin.
As he saunters back to his stool, he catches the slightest sparkle out of the corner of his eye. Startled by the sudden shimmer, he looks again, certain his eyes have deceived him. The man rubs his eyes in disbelief. Prepared to see nothing upon reopening them, he takes another look. Lo and behold! A diamond, or more likely, a cubic zirconium, lay neglected on the floor. But hey, hope springs eternal.
The man looks around. No one else has seen the jewel nor does anyone appear to be looking for it. The contrast between the iridescent shimmer and the dirty bar floor is too much for him to handle. He picks up the stone and puts it in his pocket.
Is this diamond his for the taking? Does the ancient common law of “finders keepers, losers weepers” hold validity in this situation?
This hypothetical man has led an honest life; he’s never stolen from another and never asks for much. Have the planets fortuitously aligned on this particular Saturday?
What if I told you that I know this “man” and that “he” did in fact find a diamond lying on the ground. No, it wasn’t on the floor of Shooters, but it was lying alone and forsaken somewhere in the greater Durham area.
Suspicious of its pedigree, he had the stone appraised only to learn that he was the new possessor of a diamond—a genuine, bona fide, honest-to-God, big ol’ shiny diamond. And guess what? It was appraised at $10,000.
$10,000!
For our man, or any man for that matter, $10,000 is a life-altering amount of money. With 10 grand, he could buy a new car or a new wardrobe or new purebred puppy and pay for all of its shots. He could put the money in the bank or start a small business or pay for, oh, I don’t know, half of his fall semester’s tuition at Duke.
He could take a trip to Las Vegas or invest in some unfamiliar stock or buy season tickets to the Durham Bulls games for himself and a few of his closest friends. Our man could quadruple his food points, eat at the Angus Barn twice a week for the entire fall semester and still have enough money left over to satisfy his hall’s late night Randy’s cravings.
He could get his ears pierced, buy an identical diamond to the one he found and, as my good friend Lil’ Wayne once so elegantly stated, rock “more ice than a super-sized drink.”
I know what you’re thinking. The man should find the rightful owner and return the diamond. It obviously fell out of a jewelry setting and belongs to someone who lives close by…
And now I’ll play devil’s advocate. Let’s assume anyone who wears a $10K bauble in college doesn’t need the money. And besides, the man hasn’t seen any posters for a missing diamond. No one has asked him about a lost jewel. As far as he is concerned, it belongs to no one. He can’t simply put up a sign displaying “FOUND: A big diamond. Does it belong to you?”
So should he give it to charity? If yes, how does he decide which one? Who needs the money more? The children of Durham or the children of New York? The addicts on the street or the dogs in the pound? The future farmers of America or the under-funded opera?
What would you do? I know what he did…
Molly Lester is a Trinity senior. Her column runs every other Tuesday.
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