A co worker came to me with a Ziploc bag stuffed with pennies. "Someone paid for popcorn with this!" Then she handed me the bag and I briefly imagined it was a medieval bounty paid for delivering a fugitive to the royal court. Except instead of gold it was 600 plus pennies in varying stats of age. Including many that were nasty rime coated green veterans of long campaigns trapped in a kid's piggy bank. Someone had shot their shot in securing that bag of popcorn. I hoped they got the Cinnamon Roll flavor which sounds awful but is lovely. Cinnabon at the movies! Which still sounds awful but its good. Buy a bag for $6 and help us out to try and see?!
First, I said, I am going to find this kid and read them the riot act. Which made me feel like quite the dad because who uses the term "riot act?"
Second, I am going to take this change and roll it. Which I LOVE! More than doing dishes and shoveling snow. Oh and washing walls.I realize that make me quite intriguing indeed. Like James Bond but in the suburbs!
But all these things are about taking something and making order from it. And don't mistake me for some Type A ultra clean freak. You should see my desk at work. And the kitchen when at 11:45pm after fighting with my kids to do their homework (How many hops on the number line!?) I just say fuck it.
However, these things scratch a particular itch. Change rolling because it takes all the disparate pieces and turns them into neat tubes of actionable currency. All these loose change is useless and annoying but seeing 12 sticks of 50 cent rolled pennies? That is pure dynamite! It even looks like dynamite with the brown paper wrapper and the burnt old west red lettering.
A roll of quarters? That is a fusion core with the heft and power of a purchasing grenade. Ka-fucking-BOOM I paid for lunch with a roll of quarters. A roll of gold dollar coins which I have only seen once but sometimes those roll packets come with a handful of them. They are black and mythical in both their creation and power.
You pay in a roll of change and the cashier feels that heft and effort. They are likely annoyed but it is only because they are jealous that you created something of such locked up dynamism.
Trust me. It is worth the effort.
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