funny money

04-23-00

Fleck: Dad! Why is Mom sitting in all that water?

Betsy: Hey, Fleck, wanna take a bath with Mom?

John: I so want to just push him in right now, is that bad?

Betsy: No, but it's a pretty negative thought.

Fleck loves to sit on the edge of the tub when I take a bath. Sometimes he taps the water with his paw, then spatters the pages of my book with the water. Today he had a great time watching my toes disappear and reappear above the surface. John distracted him for a minute, and some evil part of me used my toes to pull the tip of his extra-long black tail into the water. John and I sat there, shocked, while Fleck looked from one of us to the other, seemingly unaware that the last two inches of his tail was floating. Black fur swirled like seaweed.

Note: John was not in the tub with me. He just came in to see the fun with the cat on the edge of the tub. I swear.

Eventually, Fleck got bored and stood to leave. Hopped down onto the floor, leaving a trail of bathwater behind him. The tail curled up over his back and dripped, scaring the shit out of the poor guy. He jumped at least six inches, and sideways. All the jumping made the tail drip on him again and he hopped the other way. He noticed his tail was strangely pointy, and turned around to lick it. Took him at least four 360's before he remembered to put his butt on the floor, then reach for the tail.

"Christ, Mom, first you put that greasy stuff on my back that makes me itch and now my tail's all fucked up! Everyone's going to make fun of me!"

Hehe. Got news for ya, Fleck.

So, hey, about those new dollar coins? They rule. For years I've thought we should have dollar coins like they have in Canada, and everywhere else in the world. (Not dollars, exactly, but you know. Marks. Pounds. Et cetera.) The Susan B. Anthonys failed, apparently because they look too much like quarters. Don't ask me; I was, like, five when they stopped minting those.

There are many reasons why we needed a dollar coin. It's worth more than paper, though granted it's not much more, so the coins in circulation are more representative of the "money" that they, you know, represent. It's convenient in vending machines, which often don't accept paper money. There are official reasons and aesthetic reasons. I stood behind a cash register for three years, and I can tell you I've seen some of the ugliest paper dollars in the world. Money you don't even want to touch. Bills torn in half, bills covered with lipstick (ew?), bills with Bible verses scribbled on them. I've seen dollar bills that looked like they were used for toilet paper.

So I was pretty pumped about the Sacajawea dollar coins. I heard on the news that they were passing them out as change at WalMart, so I shopped at WalMart. I didn't go to the cashier and say "Gimme a dollar coin!" but I did buy just enough stuff so that I'd need a few singles back in my change. Each and every time, I got a handful of good old George W. the First. Whenever I paid for something in cash, at any store, I peeked (poke? lol) into the drawer to see if the cashier was holding out on me.

Notice, in all those reasons I gave for the dollar coins' coolness, I never mentioned the words "collector's" and "item." I never said it would be cool to get a whole big stash of the coins and sit around and think how great it was that I had a bunch of dollar coins. I wanted to get one and use it. Seems like a lot of people are hoarding them, though, because there's not a dollar coin to be found in all of middle Georgia.

Finally, my dad got hold of a few when I was up in Michigan and he passed them on to me. At the same time, John scored one when he saluted a new officer. (Tradition: a brand-new officer gives a buck to the first guy who salutes him. Weird military fact number 48.) So John and I had a few gold dollar coins around the house. We specifically did not take them to the bank to put in the savings account because we wanted to SPEND them. We wanted to put those dollar coins into circulation so people would take our example and SPEND them.

We went to Publix the other nightto pick up some Morningstar Farms faux meat products. At the checkout line, John pulled out a few bills and two dollar coins to pay for the groceries. The cashier, a forty-ish woman who's always seemed sensible, saw the coins in his hand and cried, "No WAY!" She immediately dug into her own pockets and said, "I gotta have those!" She proceeded to hold up the five-thirty rush while she sifted two dollar bills out of her wallet and exchanged them for the coins, which she stuck in her pocket.

Okay, like I said, I was a cashier for years. One thing you never do is draw attention to the fact that you are a living creature. If the people in your line see that you are human, they will eat you alive. Grocery store customers are totally cannibalistic. If YOU ( and I do mean YOU,) have ever said a rude thing to a cashier, even if you thought he or she deserved it, then I am talking about you. Zip it! —there is no excuse. You are a bad, BAD person and I hate you for making me mark my negative thoughts card.

Anyway, another thing a cashier never does is take time to buy cool money out of their drawer. Do it after the customers leave, if you have to have that Bicentennial quarter. You collect wheat pennies, huh? You're a connoisseur of silver plugs? Did I just leave a special edition Philedelphia-minted wooden buffalo nickel from the year 1489 in your grubby-money-stained, fingerprintless hand? I don't want to hear about it.

John and I nudged each other below the level of the counter. On the drive over we'd been poking fun of the people on the news who rushed out to WalMart on the day the coins arrived in order to buy rolls and rolls of them, just to hide them away in their houses. When our cashier jizzed on the dollar coins, I just sort of smirked at my feet, the way I do when I think people are stupid. Really stupid.

The cashier caught me smirking and said, "I've only seen one or two of these!"

John cheerily (and loudly) said, "That's why we need to spend them! Keep them in circulation! They're normal now, not collectible at all!"

Chastised, the cashier replied, "I just wanna keep one or two of them at home, you know...."

"I know," we reassured her. "I know." We snickered all the way out the door.