Loose change
<This story has two endings: one is fact and one is fiction. The truth is the stranger of the two.>
A few weeks ago I gathered up all the loose change from the small dish on top of my dresser. I also scooped up the spillage alongside the dish (which had been overflowing for months), the change in my pant pockets, in my car’s cup holder, in the junk drawer in the kitchen, every last cent that I could find. I put the whole kit and caboodle into a plastic Zip-lock bag and took it to the Coinstar machine at the grocery store.
I did this not because I needed the money, but because I needed a jumpstart in my life. It was a symbolic gesture. I was frustrated that I wasn’t writing. It was the usual writer’s block for me. I had succumbed to a revolving door of excuses: I didn’t have time; didn’t have fresh ideas; didn’t have energy. I was in a rut and all those coins were to blame, so they had to go. It’s probably worth mentioning here that symbolism isn’t always the straightest branch in the logic tree. The bottom line is I needed a scapegoat and that weighty Zip-lock bag of change was, in my mind, the physical manifestation of all my problems.
I must admit that I find it very satisfying to dump a large bag of change into a Coinstar machine. If you’ve ever used one, you know what I mean. I trade in my coins pretty regularly, even when I’m not trying to lick writer’s block with a symbolic gesture. I love the ring of the coins filling the hopper; the rapid fire ka-ching as the metal disks are mechanically separated and counted; the digital readout spiraling upward with the dollar amount I’m being credited. Coinstar’s cut for this transaction is 8.9 cents per dollar, a bit steep I think. But by the time I’m standing in front of one of these machines, change is my enemy and I’ll pay what it takes to be rid of it.
At the end of my Coinstar transaction the device spit out a receipt for $27.89 along with instructions to take it to a cashier to redeem. Yes, that is exactly what I was after on this day: redemption. I would buy back my creative spark by ridding myself of all this burdensome coinage.
Since I was at the grocery store, I figured I might as well apply the money on the chit to some food items that I needed. So I walked the aisles and picked up some milk and bread, pasta and marinara sauce, meats and cheeses, some salad makings, a bottle of wine, a tube of toothpaste, and so on. When I was satisfied that I had what I needed, I headed to the checkout lanes.
The store wasn’t very crowded, but there weren’t enough cashiers, so the checkout line was long. It took a few minutes before I was able to move my basket into the lane. Once there, I placed my items on the conveyer belt and put a spacer bar down behind my stuff. The woman next in line starting unloading her groceries. I couldn’t resist taking a look at what she was buying. I always do this. I suspect that everybody does. What a strange little voyeuristic experience: the casual association of strangers and the things they buy. “Whoa. Look at that. A tube of Preparation-H. Somebody’s got a little itchy-scratchy problem down below.”
As the cashier scanned my items, I fingered the Coinstar receipt in my shirt pocket making sure it was at the ready. Nothing worse than getting this far only to forget to turn in the receipt, which is only good for one day. Think of the psychological damage that would cause:
He never wrote a word after that day. For years he just wandered the streets begging change from strangers, and dropping the coins into public fountains wishing for God knows what…
The cashier finished with my order and read the total off the register. I didn’t hear the amount, focused as I was on my own little internal banter.
“Oh, here,” I said, “I need to cash this in.”
Ending #1
The cashier took the receipt from me, looked it over to verify that it was legal tender, then scanned the bar code. Next thing I know, he had his hand stretched out toward me. He was trying to give me something.
“Eighty-three cents is your change,” he said.
This caught me by surprise. I hadn’t considered change. Dollar bills, maybe, but coins to replace the coins I just turned in?
“No, you don’t understand,” I explained. “I traded in all my coins at the Coinstar machine so that I could have a fresh start. This is more than a Coinstar redemption. This is a personal redemption. A catharsis, of sorts.”
The cashier looked at me in disbelief. “Well,” he said after a moment, “your catharsis has change coming back.”
“You can keep it,” I offered.
“I’m not allowed to do that,” he countered.
“Well, don’t you have one of those little charity boxes that you can drop the coins in for me. You know, something that Jerry Lewis is heading up. That would be perfect.”
“Sorry. Not at the moment.”
“Look, I can’t take this change.”
“Well, you have to.”
“O.K., then I’ll buy something else. What can I get for 83 cents?” I reached for a candy bar from the rack behind me. “How much is this?”
The cashier scanned the jumbo-sized Snicker’s bar. “Eighty-two cents.”
“Hmm, is there anything that costs a penny more?”
Sensing the futility of this situation, the cashier leaned back and folded his arms, waiting for me to decide.
“All right,” I said, “I’ll take the candy bar.”
Visibly relieved, the cashier put the change he was holding back into the register and pulled out a single penny.
I considered refusing the coin, but the look on the Preparation-H lady behind me told me that she was either becoming agitated by all this or was in need of the aforementioned product. It dawned on me that my new jumpstart on life could be dampened if it started by pissing off people in line at the grocery store. What good is Yin if you don’t have Yang?
So I put out my hand and took the penny from the cashier along with a receipt for my groceries and a coupon for a pasta sauce I don’t particularly like. I grumbled “thank you” and started pushing my cart away, not really pleased with this outcome.
As I turned the corner, my cart bumped into something and…
…the penny I was holding in my hand suddenly came loose and dropped to the floor.
I’m sure you are thinking that I dropped it on purpose. I admit that I had repositioned the penny between two fingers so that I was barely holding on, like some sort of dried fleck from my nose that I wanted to get rid of. But it was the bump of the cart that ultimately dislodged the coin from my hand, and that part wasn’t planned.
The penny rolled forward ahead of me a few feet, then veered to the left into the next checkout aisle where it settled somewhere out of view. I don’t think anybody else saw the penny fall, but I never looked back. Nor down. Instead, I continued moving forward, pushing my cart through the automatic doors and out into the parking lot, thus starting the clock on this new phase in my life, which, not surprisingly, already includes a fair amount of loose change on my dresser.
Ending #2
The cashier took the receipt from me, looked it over to verify that it was legal tender, then scanned the bar code as I loaded my groceries into the cart. I pulled out my credit card to pay off the balance of what I owed, even though I had plenty of paper money in my wallet. This was a Coinstar redemption. A catharsis of sorts. The last thing I needed was change coming back. But before I could swipe my card into the reader, the cashier spoke to me.
“This is strange,” he said.
“What’s that?” I asked.
The cashier smiled and handed me the receipt. “Your bill is exactly the same as the Coinstar receipt.”
I looked at the blurry computer receipt and noted the zero on the “balance owed” line near the bottom. “Well, I’ll be damned,” I said laughing out loud. But I couldn’t spend too much time gloating, as the line behind me had grown longer and the lady with the hemorrhoid cream really looked as though she needed to get home and take care of business.
As I started walking toward the exit of the store, I was thrilled by the strange twist of fate that had just befallen me. This was a most excellent beginning to my fresh start on life. Looking over the groceries in my basket, I suddenly had a strange feeling that something wasn’t right. All these groceries had to have cost more than the Coinstar credit of $27.89. The bottle of wine alone was $10. The toothpaste was nearly $5. There were four full bags of groceries here. I stopped and read the receipt more closely. I was right; something was amiss. The cashier had accidentally scanned the Coinstar receipt twice. I was credited for $55.78.
So, in fact, my grocery bill wasn’t the exact amount of my Coinstar chit but exactly twice that amount. I owed $27.89, which was another strange twist of fate. What to do? Part of me was thinking, “well, it was the store’s mistake; your gain.” But another part of me was thinking, “this is bad karma…you’re going to walk outside and get hit by a bus.”
I must have stood there for five minutes contemplating my options. In the end, I decided this fresh start of mine would be tainted if I kept the ill-begotten money. I needed to do the right thing. And that’s what I did. The store manager thanked me for my honesty as I swiped my credit card and paid the money that I owed.
I left the store without a penny in my pocket, and yet I felt as rich as Bill Gates. Then I went home and started writing this story.
10:47:16 PM 
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