Hope and a lot of change.....

Let’s talk about change. Not necessarily hope. Just change.

The kind that collects in the bottom of a woman’s purse or a man’s pockets.

Periodically I empty all of the coins from my wallet into a smaller change purse I carry so that my wallet doesn’t look like a chipmunk preparing for a bad winter. I’m not sure what I’ve gained, though, since all that metal is still weighing my shoulder down. It does seem to help for some reason that I can’t explain, though.

Pennies have their own repository in a ceramic dish in my kitchen. When they start falling out of the dish onto the counter, I gather them up and make a trip to that noisy machine inside the door of my local grocery store that whirs and sorts and counts and then spits out bills at me. Who said a penny has no value?

Here’s the thing I’ve been pondering, though. I’ve noticed that “older” shoppers (certainly older than me) must really hate change. There are many levels to this statement—many don’t react well to new ideas or ways of doing things or they haven’t taken the plastic off their furniture in decades—but let’s focus here on the coins that are the inevitable result of buying things. That kind of change. It’s just going to happen.  You give someone a $5 bill for an item that rings up at $4.27 and boom—there it is. Seventy-three cents to add to the collection in your wallet or pocket.

But seniors must hate the stuff beyond all reason, because the next time they step up to the counter to pay, here’s how it goes. Their purchases total $16.63, but rather than hand over the $10, the $5, and 2 one dollar bills, they start digging in their wallets or pants to come up with exactly sixty-three cents to add to the $16 they have begrudgingly pulled out. (We won’t even discuss the oft-seen option of attempting to ferret out the $1.63 entirely in change. My heart won’t take it.) And heaven forbid they use the $20 bill they have hidden in there. Not going to happen.

In the meantime, we all stand patiently (or not so much) behind them, watching this archaeological dig, as the clock tick-tick-ticks away our perpetually disappearing time. And maddeningly, all this searching sometimes ends with, “Oh, here!” as they toss bills on the counter anyway. They give up the quest, and we all sigh in relief.

Maybe legal tender for those over a certain age should ONLY be paper money. No change allowed at all for them. I’m sure merchants wouldn’t mind, especially if they round up to the next dollar when they see white hair approaching. None of us would mind, either.

That would be a welcome change, wouldn’t it?

We can always hope.

 What I like most about change is that it's a synonym for 'hope.' 

Linda Ellerbee 

Big box = big pain

Last weekend, my mother and I were out Christmas shopping, hitting a number of stores in the morning before the roads became clogged with other shoppers. We ate lunch while the holiday music enticed us to spend more once we had full stomachs and our feet were rested a bit. One item eluded us, though. Something that jumps out in front of you whenever you're not looking for it, but now we couldn't seem to find one anywhere.

We ended up at the closest Big Box store. You know the one I mean. They have the best prices after all and there seems to be one in every quadrant of town. I have taken to avoiding this place at all costs, for a number of reasons. Too few employees, buggies of stock blocking the aisles. But the major reason is the sheer size of the place. First you have to walk the length of a football field in the parking lot to even get into the building. Then you're faced with a store the size of Oklahoma, not that I've ever been there, but I know it's big.

As we entered the front door (the one I'm convinced they have rigged with some fancy technological whirly gig to make you forget why you came there in the first place, so you buy lots more than you intended) of this particular SUPERSTORE version of the Big Box, I came to a dead halt. My mother ran into the back of me, in her fog of being 85 years old and probably out way too late by this time.

ACRES of stuff, as far as I could see. Farther, actually, since I couldn't even SEE the back wall of the place. Groceries to the right, off into the haze over there. Clothes in the middle, everything else to the right. And it was probably EVERYTHING ever made, from the looks of it.

A sheer exhaustion dropped down over me. I think the current vernacular would be OMG! I have the money today to buy just about anything I need, but the energy level of my younger days has deserted me. We stood there for a few minutes, trying to decide if it was worth it. Did we want that item enough to walk the distance it would require to find it?

Well, it turned out we did. So, off we went into the innards of the monster. However, I stopped the first employee I saw, the one who had her head ducked into a shelf of candles, hoping no one would notice her. I asked for the item. She stood up, gazed across the store diagonally and indicated I should follow her. Then she took off at a clip nearly impossible for me to match....me, the person who has conquered the Stairmaster at the gym. My poor mother was left shuffling in the dust, hanging on to the cart for support. But I didn't want to lose that woman who seemed to know where the item hid in the midst of millions of other items. Why don't they have a little trolley? A map, starting with YOU ARE HERE!  Maybe some of those headphones like they use in museums for walking tours. Something, anything.

After what seemed like 15 minutes, weaving around abandoned buggies, screaming kids, arguing couples, the foxhound employee stopped and pointed down the aisle in front of her. Then she was gone. Poof! Disappeared. I waited for my mother to catch up with me, and she didn't look too good by this time. Her face was pale and her breath was choppy.

Then we marched down that aisle, craning our heads right and left, up and down (yes, you have to look UP, too), until we reached the end. Puzzled, we reversed and did it again. Nothing.

It wasn't there after all. All gone. Empty space. SOLD OUT. OMG....

Is Peterson's 5 & 10 still open?



The hardest thing in life to learn is which bridge to cross and which to burn.

Frank Noble