d a-
Who doesn’t keep a washing machine timer in their locker? LOL
You asked for it- here’s the story.
Our economics teacher wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. He also spoke in a monotone that went up and down with the same rhythmic period as the diesel engines on the Staten Island Ferry. (I used to be able to model it using the sine function but that’s for a different time.)
One friend, I’ll call him Zevy, used to come down with serious indigestion just from hearing the guy lecture. During one particular boring class the teacher said that “counterfeiting money can ruin the economy”. Zevy raises his hand and asks “how can paper ruin the economy?” The teachers face went blank because he’s reading out of the textbook and it doesn’t explain it. So Zevy continues, “I counterfeit money but I’d hate to cause any damage to this wonderful country”.
The teacher looks at him in disbelief and says, “yeah right, can you bring some in tomorrow?”
That afternoon Zevy went to the bank and asked to withdraw a few thousand dollars in crisp hundred dollar bills from a student fund he helped manage. (He was even lucky enough to get some in sequence.)
The next day before class he put the bills on his seat and sat down on them (you’ll see why later). During class the teacher remember and said, “So Zevy, did you bring any samples of that money you print up?” Zevy slid the money out and stood up, “Oh, I almost forgot to show you, here’s some that I just printed before class, it’s still warm from the press”. Zevy then began to show him how sophisticated his operation was as most counterfeiters use all the same serial number and his machine prints them in sequence. Also, to the best of his knowledge, he was the only one who was able to get the thread into the bill.
The teacher was able to tell that they were fake (it just has that look) but admitted that they were the best fakes he ever saw!
Fast forward a few weeks and the washing machine repair guy comes to fix the washing machine (it got stuck in the rinse cycle and flooded the place). The repair guy showed me how some detergent got into the timer and it couldn’t move to the next cycle. I asked him if I could keep the broken one to show my physics teacher and he let.
The next time Zevy felt ready to sign the Declaration of Constipation before class even began we hatched a plan to get him excused without getting permission from the principal.
Before class I called the teacher over and showed him the timer. “We had a really bad break down in the machine last night, look at all this ink that leaked into the timer, the machine couldn’t go to the next cycle and the bills have to much green ink on them and could never pass off as real. We have a contract to get lots of cash to one of our clients by midnight, so Zevy has to stand over the machine and make sure nothing goes wrong.”
The teacher understood and promised not to tell anyone.
The copper wire came from that timer.