The Day Money Disappeared

Published April 29, 2008

By Mac Smith

Weirder things have happened. Trillions of insects’ descending upon the Yankees in the playoffs last year, George Bush’s winning reelection, and a giant lizard’s destroying Tokyo all have long lasting legacies, but are for the most part unexplainable. But this is the story of one particularly interesting case: From 11AM-4PM last Tuesday, the entire UVM student body ran out of money.

It seems difficult to simply digest without any proof or cause, but seeing is believing. All money just up and vanished as if the universe were playing some sort of sick joke. I know because I was there.

Last Tuesday, The Water Tower geared up for a highly anticipated campus event: T-Shirt Sales. It was a beautiful sunny day around 80 degrees, and the atmosphere on campus was electric with anticipation. We set up our table, brought out The Water Tower stand, cranked some music, and waited. What happened next was as horrifying as it was bewildering: Nobody bought shirts.

Sales pitch after sales pitch, people would glance at the shirts and announce they would like to support us, but simply had no money. At first, we thought they were being nice, but after two hours had gone by and only two shirts sold, we had to get some answers.

The Water-T collection is very exclusive. We anticipated to be sold out in minutes. The fact that we had the table reserved for five hours was just a precaution. The conclusion we came to was the most logical. Nobody was buying shirts because everybody’s money had disappeared.

We decided to test the hypothesis. Every time someone declined to buy a shirt due to lack of funds, I asked to see their wallet. Lo and behold, the would-be buyer produced an empty wallet every time without fail. WEEEIIIRRRDD. By 4PM we had to admit defeat and packed up our stuff.

The next day, the phenomenon seemed to have subsided, as students craving the shirts flocked to the stand before any other weird voodoo shit could go down. I’m happy to say The Water Tower sold all of its t-shirts. We would like to thank all of those who were able to support us, and apologize to those affected by the strange disappearance of money. We know you desperately wanted one, but fate had an unforeseen card to play.

Ever since that day, thoughts about those dreadful five hours and its possible causes have kept me up at night. I would some day like to discover the divine plan behind those events, but for now I’m not going to dabble in things that will probably drive me crazy. Instead, I’ll leave it be and let it fade into the growing archives of human lore.

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