My dad asked me to stop at a flea market to replace the battery in his watch. There was a long line of people at the stand, so to kill time I was looking through a basket of random foreign coins for sale. I picked up four of them that looked cool and bought them all for $1. I went home and tried to identify them. Three of them were pretty easy to find on the internet and were worth less than my dollar. But I couldn't find the oldest looking one because it only had symbols on it. I finally posted a picture of it on a coin collector's forum, and someone was able to identify it as a rare Japanese coin I couldn't pronounce. I sold it online to a collector for an easy $200.
I decided to go surfing on a cold October morning last year. I woke up early, grabbed my gear, and drove to the beach before the sun came up. Despite the excellent conditions, there was no one else in the water. I paddled out, struggled to get past the heavy whitewater. Eventually I broke through, and I stopped to catch my breath and watch the sunrise. And then without any warning, two giant, fully grown dolphin jumped completely out of the water, inches away from the front of my board. They crossed each other in the air, and hung suspended in front of the rising sun for a split-second - an image I'll remember for the rest of my life. I looked back towards the shore and realized I was the only one who saw it.
