change

I love change. That is, literal change, and not the intangible kind where things around you are now different. I mean pennies and nickels and dimes. They are my favorite.

J has been keeping a stash of loose change for a few years now, and that stash is now sitting pretty in a glass jar about the size of a family-size jar of mayonnaise. it's a good stash. every once in awhile, I stick my hand in the jar to get a nice palm-full of coins to put in my wallet. my mentality is that they are coins, and thus not "real money" in the same sense that dollar bills are, so i feel less guilty scraping together a dollar from these coins to get a frivolous cup of coffee from mcdonald's or something. after all, they are fairly insignificant individually unless put together in a large group.

Lately I've been becoming more brazen and using change when doing real shopping. i'm not so obnoxious that i'm counting out thirty pennies or anything, but i have pushed it a little and have been counting out nine pennies or something, paired with a few dimes and nickels. I feel that cashiers are a touch more understanding in Chinatown and so i've been employing it more there, but even the other day when i carefully counted out a dollar in all change (but in my defense it was all silver coins), the lady remarked in cantonese that i had a lot of coins, so i guess that instance was pushing my luck. but it's not like i'm trying to pay them in jelly beans or hugs or something, coins are real currency, so my apologies for using coins are small and few.

there's something incredibly satisfying about dishing over 8 pennies and not having to break a bigger currency, and freeing your wallet from the weight of those coins. i suppose we could just bring the jar of coins to a coinstar machine and redeem it for a starbucks card or something, but i like this coin spending thing too much.