Where's George?

In the trenches of Christmas Shopping Combat, I received a One Dollar Bill from Target in Hattiesburg, MS. The next day, as I was surveying the damage to the cash in my wallet, I discovered a $1 bill with this message stamped on it: "Track this bill at Where's George.com." Since I have seen this message on bills in the past, I decided to give it a try.

After inputting the serial number into their database, the website reported "Ole George" was initially entered into their tracking system on April 19, 2007 in Holt, Michigan. Since I brought the bill to Leakesville, MS on December 21, 2007, the website calculated the greenback had traveled 824 miles in 246 days, covering, on average, 3.3 miles per day.

What society profits from such detailed information is not clear to me at the moment, but I was semi-entertained by discovering the distance the currency had traversed.

Furthermore, I was reminded of a joke I heard about the life of a $1 Bill. A version of the joke is on Comedy-Zone.net .

A one dollar bill met a twenty dollar bill and said, "Hey, where have you been? I haven't seen you around here much." The twenty answered, "I've been hanging out at the casinos, went on a cruise and did the rounds of the ship, back to the United States for awhile, went to a couple of baseball games, to the mall, that kind of stuff. How about you?" The one dollar bill said, "You know, same old stuff... church, church, church."

Where will your money go this year?