BORROWED WISDOM

 Life is just one dilemma after another.  Some are enormous and others are gigantic.  Then again, if you're as lucky as me, they are just slightly nettlesome.  

All my married life I have saved my change - coins, that is.  I never really had a piggy bank but a small jar or apothecary sufficed.  It was just so satisfying to go to the bank and receive 30, 40, or 50 dollars in greenbacks for it two or three times a year.  With pride, I looked on it as a long term accomplishment.  From pennies; dollars!  All you have to do is stuff them into paper tubes.  

That all started when a penny was worth a penny.  It was a nice thing to do on a rainy afternoon.  Dump your savings on the dining room table.  In the background the hi-fi was turning imprints on vinyl into music and, on the table next to the spilled coins, a glass of cold draft secured in a jug from the local pub the night before.  Some things in life were simple.  

About fifteen years ago, I graduated into a more modern approach to the coin issue.  By then, the pennies were no longer worth a penny and neither were the nickels worth a nickel. I was rounding every bill I got in order to avoid change. The fact I had a couple of young grandkids made it easy.  Keep saving all the coins but instead of counting them just pass on the small change to the little ones. They were real impressed for a short while - they eventually figured out that small coins are more trouble than they are worth.  They quickly figure out that the coins couldn't buy very much.

Now, I'm still at it.  They have coin counters at the grocery stores.  The banks tried it but it was evidently too much trouble for them.  Anyway, you just take your coins in a sack to the market and dump them in a machine.  Voila!   Out comes money.  I tried it.  I put four quarters in one of those machines to test it and out came three quarters, a dime and a nickel.  I suppose modern finances are beyond me.

A friend told me what his grandkids told him.  When he told them he didn't have any money for what they wanted they told him to go to the "wall"; money comes right out of it.   Well, when I was a youngster, I was constantly reminded that it didn't grow on trees.  I wasn't aware of the "wall".