Will We Lose the Joy of Loose Change?
It all adds up
I was working on a research project for my graduate program back in the days before you could just click on a website page and print it out in the comfort of your own home. So, I went to the library and stood in line to make copies at the one and only copier in the county. It was a big machine and took up the better part of the reference area on the first floor.
In front of me was an old woman waiting to copy a recipe from the latest Woman’s Day magazine, which was too new for circulation. Her heavy purse bulged at her elbow. In one hand, she gingerly held the magazine, careful not to crease its cover. The fingers of her other hand clutched a nickel and a dime.
When it was her turn, she marched to the copier, lifted the lid, and placed the magazine on the glass. But when she saw the coin box, her face contorted, and she turned to the only other person nearby. Me.
“They have raised the copier price to twenty cents!”
From her tone, I assumed she was blaming me for the price increase, an accusation I vehemently deny. But for the sake of keeping the peace, I commiserated with her.
“Yes, ma’am, the price of copies went up last spring.”
“It did not!” she protested. “I have made copies here before, and copies have always been fifteen cents.” She held out her hand in which she still clasped the two coins.
If you know me well, you also know that I can be quite sarcastic. At this point, I had about a dozen replies in my head, none of which would have made me seem like a likable person and none of which would have earned me any gold stars for Christian charity.
I was fixated on the woman’s emphasis on the word “always.” Copies have always been fifteen cents, even sixty-four years ago, when the Xerox company introduced the first automatic photocopier. Copies have always been fifteen cents, even during the time before copiers existed.
Knock on the door of the scriptorium at the local medieval monastery — which this woman may have done in her youth — and ask the good brothers to make a copy of a lemon chiffon cake recipe, complete with illumination and a border of gold leaf, and the monk would lean close and whisper (because of his vow of silence), “That will be fifteen cents, and not a penny more, for the love of God.”
Before I could make my reply, however, the woman had dumped her purse onto the top of the copier and was fishing through the used napkins, old utility bills, and peppermint discs wrapped in cellophane to find another nickel. She muttered and complained, picking up one item and discarding it until she found a nickel.
As she jammed the coins into the slot and clumped away with her single sheet of paper, leaving the magazine under the lid, I suspected she would not be returning to use the machine again. And probably the recipe she had printed would leave a bitter taste in her mouth.
These days, of course, coins are all but obsolete. Grocery store check-outs, vending machines, and yes, public copiers accept your debit card for payment. No need to dig into the bottom of a purse or “give-a-coin-take-a-coin” when you come up short.
I feel sorry for my grandchildren who won’t feel the joy of finding coins between the couch cushions after their favorite uncle leaves or the thrill of a cold, shiny quarter under their pillows, courtesy of the tooth fairy.
When I was growing up, my parents never spent coins. They never paid with exact change. If they broke a dollar, the coins went into a jar in their closet. My siblings and I laughed at this. What good were a few pennies or even a quarter?
“They add up,” Mom would say. And sure enough, those coins became seed money for our vacation. Yes, they regularly saved enough money in coins in a year to take a family of seven to the beach for an entire week. One summer they recarpeted the whole house with the year’s coin savings. This is not such an easy thing to do these days.
I miss coins. I miss the way they feel in my pocket, how they weigh down my purse. I miss the urgency to pick up a penny from the sidewalk because it is just the coin I need to round out the ninety-nine I have at home. Because that is the beauty of coins: they add up.
If my research is correct, there are seven nations across the globe that do not use coin currency at all, and three others that still have some in circulation but are no longer producing new coins. If the US goes that way, we might soon have a generation of kids that do not understand idioms such as “flip a coin,” “two sides to every coin,” “penny for your thoughts,” or being “nickeled and dimed to death,” much the same way my kids look at me bewildered when I tell them they sound “like a broken record.”
If I had a dime for every time that happened…
I can imagine the little old lady at the copier probably squirreled away her coins, too, carefully removing a nickel and a dime to reproduce a single page from a magazine. Maybe she went home irate at the insanity of paying another whole nickel for a copy that has always, always cost only fifteen cents. It is likely that her grandchildren laughed at her, rolled their eyes, and admonished her to get with the times.
“Coins are worthless, Grandma.”
And maybe she replied knowingly, “They add up.”
Bet those kids weren’t laughing when they inherited the buckets of coins Grandma had been hoarding in her closet since she broke her first dollar.
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