Conversation with My Wife (37)
See a penny, pick it up, all the day you’ll have irrational fears about the microbial colonies growing in your pocket and gradually working through to your skin where they will manifest as flesh-eating bacteria*
Crossing a parking lot, to or from some store.
DEB: (looking down) It’s a quarter! A quarter is okay, right?
Reaches down to pick up the quarter she spotted.
ME: (sighing) Yes, dear. A quarter is okay.
Because what else am I going to say at this point?
Picking up filthy pennies and nickels from public parking lots, where they were dropped by who-knows-who and subject to who-knows-what before being spotted by Deb — and it is always Deb who spies them — we have established is Not Okay. Dimes are negotiable. Quarters — okay, THE quarter, since there’s been exactly one in 17 years of marriage — are de facto okay.
ME: Did you know that in Japan, it’s considered rude to pick up change on the street? Because it must belong to someone, who might come back for it, so you’re basically stealing.
DEB: Well, Jackster, back when I lived in Chambersburg [after her first divorce] I would sometimes find a dollar in the street. I was flat broke back then, so a dollar was a big deal to me. And I just figured it was God’s way for sending some money my way, so I didn’t have any problem with picking it up.
ME: And we don’t live in Japan, anyway.
DEB: Precisely!
*Oh, I’m sorry, were you about to make some point about how the pocket change we get from cash registers or vending machines or whatever are just as nasty and contaminated as anything subjected to long-term UV radiation in a parking lot? Well, excuse me, Ms/Mr/Mx Discovery Channel Expert! Hey, do I poke holes in your little neuroses? Do I point out that wombats are only found in Australia and are thus very unlikely to burrow into your home and gnaw you to death in your sleep?** NO! Because this is MEDIUM, dammit, and here, We Respect The Baseless Neuroses!
**Unless you’re one of our Down Under friends, in which case, yeah, sorry mate, the wombats are coming for you. You can probably hear the sound of teeth on wood from under the floor at night, right now. Which is odd, what with the concrete subfloor and all, but wombats, they’re crafty. Crafty and evil. And they know where you live, because they traced your location through that Paypal donation they made to you. Crafty, evil, hacking little buggers. Wombats. <shiver>
