One day I was wondering around the hardware store looking for some way to fix the ceiling at my house.  It was a crazy thing that happened.  Missy was sweeping the floor when the dog saw a mouse.  Buttercups, the toy poodle had finally found something that she was bigger than and went after it with a passion.  Wouldn’t you know it Buttercup runs right under Missy’s feet.  Missy stumbles and as she is going down, the broom goes up, putting a nice hole right through the sheet-rock.  So as I get the dog under control and help my wife up I feel what appears to be snowflakes on the back of my neck as the insulation slowly falls to the ground.  Everyone is ok.  I help clean up the mess, but in the mean time I feel a nice steady twenty-eight degree breeze flowing down from above.  At this rate our very inadequate and quite old furnace will surely breathe its last breath.  I grab an old blanket and stuff in the hole and tell my wife that I need to head to the hardware store to see if I can find something a little more permanent.  I can see the tear in her eye as I close the door behind me.  She feels responsible, and she knows that it’s along time to a payday that usually doesn’t have enough in it already.

So here I am wondering down isles in a hardware store, looking at things that I don’t have money for, to fix a problem that wasn’t anyone’s fault, and hoping that life is just about done messing with me.  I’m standing in front of a stack of boxes marked joint compound with one hand in my pocket counting dollar bills and change, lost in thoughts of warm weather and a life with no problems, when I feel a slight tap on my shoulder.  It is an older gentleman with a nice red apron on with “do your best work” printed on it.  He was dressed fairly well for a hardware guy, but he seemed like a pretty down to earth fellow.

He said, “Hello there young man, Can I help you find something?”

I don’t know how to tell him that I really need to rob the store of some nice drywall supplies to fix a hole in my ceiling that a little mouse caused when my tiny dog got fired up and knocked my wife over, who then proceeded to jam the old broom through an even older ceiling, all so that it could snow inside instead of outside.  So I just said, “I need to patch a hole.”

The older gentleman smiled and said, “I think we can help you with that.”  He then proceeded in filling a cart with things that I would surely need to fix a nice hole in my ceiling.  I follow him around like a young puppy.  I must be a hound dog because I can’t help but imagine what my face looks like as I’m adding up all these dollars in my head.  My cheeks have to be about to touch the ground and I’m sure I got those sad droopy eyes going on.  All the while I’m rubbing that couple of dollars and change in my pocket.

He finally put a small can of ceiling paint in the cart and says, “That should about do it.  What do you think?”

All I can hear is the two nickels in my pocket rubbing together.  We stand in silence for what seems to be forever.  It like he staring me down, maybe its some salesman mind trick.  I don’t know, but its working.  I’m pretty sure I am getting visibly worked up, and I’m sure at any moment he is going to do the gentlemanly thing and politely escort me out of the store and  probably tell me in a very nice way to not come back and waste his time ever again.  I’m just about to take my first step to beat him to it and escort myself out when I notice that he’s reaching in his pocket.  Sometimes I’m pretty slow and instead up using the opportunity to beat feet, I just stand there and watch him.  He seems to be in no hurry, so I just keep staring.  He brings out his wallet.  It nothing fancy, just a nice old worn down tri-fold.  He digs around in that special pocket all of us men tend to keep.  You know the one where we keep our secret stash.  Okay, where some men keep theirs, I seem to keep some nice lint from my back pocket. Anyway, he reaches in and pulls out a crisp one-hundred dollar bill.  He now has my full attention.  Maybe I should tell him the story about the mouse, the tiny dog, my wife, the snow, really give him a good one.

He carefully straighten out the bill and in a soft voice said, “do you know what this is?”

Standing at attention and in my most respectful voice I said, “yes sir, that is a one-hundred dollar bill.”

“OK,” he said, “what is its value?”

I’m a little annoyed at the question, but I play along. “It’s worth a hundred dollars.”

He smiles a little and says, “let me ask you the question in a different way.  How long would it take you to save one hundred dollars?”

“Mmmm, I’m not for sure.”  I scratch my whiskers a bit while rubbing my two cents against my nickles and finally say “I’m guessing about four months, give or take, depending on how much the heater runs.”

“Okay”, he says, “the value is not one hundred dollars,  Its four months of you life.”

I keep scratching and rubbing, trying to grasp what he is trying to tell me.   He hands me the bill and says, “here hold it and feel it.  What is it?”

I hold it.  I’m not sure where he is going, but it feels like gold to me.  He says, “What you are holding is just numbers on paper.  It is a thing, an object.  Now I need you to listen really close here.  Things have no value.  Value is what is added when we as people do something to help someone else.   The value is not in the hundred dollars.  The value is in what I can do to impact someones life.  I can spend a hundred dollars on myself and it is still a hundred dollars, or I can add value to it by giving it to you.  To you it is not just one hundred dollars.  It is one hundred dollars and four months of your life.  Paper and numbers do not bring happiness.  Value brings happiness.  It brings happiness to you because it helps you, and it brings happiness to me, because you are happy.  Value is a transaction between two people, not a person and an object.”

I hadn’t been paying attention to what he was doing while he was talking.  He hands me a bag with all of the supplies in it and says, “here you go.  The hundred dollars is yours to do what ever you wish.  It is a gift, no strings attached.  I will only leave you with my hope.  I hope that you use a portion of it to add value to it.  Somewhere out there someone is searching for you.  Use your gifts to add value to someone else’s life.  In doing that you will find that true happiness is not in what we receive, but in what we give.”