“Do you have change for a twenty?”

That’s how it started – with those words.

“I think so,” I replied, juggling gloves and newspapers to dig into my pocket. I pulled out a couple of receipts and a five dollar bill and then went into the other pocket. Just as I was about to give up, I found a ten.

“Yes!” I exclaimed.

All right, maybe I wasn’t quite that excited. I was just collecting for my paper route after all.

It was while I was walking back down my customer’s driveway, my gloves still tucked under my arm, that I saw the writing on the $20 bill.

“Yes!” I exclaimed, for real this time. “It’s a blog post!”

This is what I saw.

I couldn’t wait to get home to check it out.

When I googled whereswilly, I saw a Wikipedia entry for it, so I decided to go there first — in case it was some kind of hacking thing. It turns out it wasn’t.

According to Wiki, the “Willy” refers to Sir Wilfred Laurier, past Prime Minister of Canada. There are apparently close to 4,000,000 bills in circulation with this message, and you can, in fact, register on the website to see where the bill has been AND be emailed to find out where it goes. It’s based on a “Where’s George” site in the U.S., to track currency there, and has been used by researchers to track the movement of pandemics, such as SARS.

Isn’t that interesting?

I’m only the second person who has tracked this particular $20, but I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes. According to the website, I can do this with any bill, any time.

You can check out the Wiki page here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where%27s_Willy%3F

Have you heard of this before? Have you ever come across a bill with a website written on it? Do you want to start one? It’s so cool!