Got a gripe to share?

Have you been searching for a unique, cheap, foolproof method of sharing a certain message, whatever it may be? Something political or maybe personal, something eating away at you perhaps or a piece of your time-earned wisdom?

Do you need a delivery method more lasting than the Internet, more respected than Facebook, less likely to be ignored than television, more bi-coastal than a newspaper? A way to help mankind? Now that I have your attention — what I’m about to say is as common as a one dollar bill. In fact, it is a one dollar bill, right there at the tips of your frustrated fingers.

I know I sound like a cheap radio ad. Blame the Acme. As the cashier hands me change the other day, I see a note scribbled on one of my dollar bills. Here goes: Dean Cullins needs peaches. I immediately think they’re not in season around here. Then wonder if this is some secret word for a body part. I look around to see if someone is watching me and think Georgia peaches or California peaches? Does he like them hard or ripe?

I turn the bill over, place it on my forehead like Carnac, hoping an image will appear. Who knows where this dollar has been, whose hands it’s touched, and whether it was intended to be found and acted upon, like a message in a bottle traveling across the ocean.

I glance left and right. I fear Dean is in trouble. Perhaps this is some obscure spy signal I’m failing to heed, or worse, perhaps this person desperately needs my expertise finding the perfect fruit.

After a search on the Internet, a hunt through Facebook, I do not find Dean. Drats! But I realize I’ve landed upon an idea in these stressful national times. If there’s something you want to say, need to say, grab a pen and send that greenback sailing on its merry way. Money not only talks, it walks. How far will it go? Ask “Where’s George,” a website devoted to finding where your singles have surfaced.

For example, one bill traveled 7,776 miles, starting in Arlington, Virginia in 2007, and was last seen sunning itself in Athens, Greece in 2010. What if the bill said, “Make more feta!” There’s a good chance we’d be having quite a few more Greek salads over here at this very moment. It’s basic common 100 cents. Got a gripe with the current administration? Let old George send it on its patriotic way. Got a problem with a frenemy? George can help you get it off your chest while you put it in other people’s pockets. Good for you.

It’s not illegal to write on a bill, just illegal to deface it in a way that prevents it from being reused. Don’t perforate the thing, don’t fold it in half and glue it, don’t cut it, don’t write smutty things, just add a short obscure note. There’s nothing illegal about that.

How many people will see it? That’s an equation called Velocity of Money, and you need a Ph.D. in macro, micro and miniscule economics to compute it. Let’s say it’s thousands, but even if it’s hundreds, it sure gets attention. If your bill said, “I see you don’t recycle” do you think you’d stash your next bottle a bit more carefully?

Go on, get out a dollar and a pen and give it an inaugural go. Maybe write something cheery during these divided times like, “Help, I’m being held prisoner in America.” Maybe you’ll even get something back, like peaches . . .