Coins on the counter

I heard awhile ago that when someone pays with real money, something registers in their brain more firmly and they feel the significance of the transaction more. It makes sense - when you have plastic to slide through a reader, it's much harder to watch those hypothetical dollars disappear, just like when you order a hamburger it's hard to imagine concretely the slaughtering and the packing and the trucking that got that meat onto your plate.

I have been known to leave my wallet at home - sometimes I take it out of my purse and stick it in another bag. We've all been there, standing there starkly vulnerable at the front of the long line at the post office, frantically feeling for something we know intuitively isn't there. We smile and shake our heads and say You know, this is just crazy, but I don't think I have my wallet! I, just, I'm so embarrassed! It seems to have happened to me at the grocery store more than anywhere else. Once, in my small midwestern college town, when I had just a few items sitting there on the register, waiting for me to hand over the green, I found I had no wallet and was two dollars short for the whole purchase. The girl behind me watched me struggle and then, in a gesture that I'll always remember, reached out and handed me the two dollars that I was missing. Don't worry about it, she said casually. It was just such a nice thing to do. Earlier this week I stopped for groceries at Trader Joe's, and found that, as I inched my way closer to the check-out counter, I was lucky enough to, firstly, realize that I had forgotten my wallet before getting to the front of the line, and secondly, have exactly $56.00 in cash. I had lots of groceries, but Trader Joe's is cheap, and I decided to gamble for it. I told the clerk and we watched the total jolt up slowly, 56 minus X and counting. It was kind of fun. Leave the oranges and scan the lettuce. Don't worry about the barbeque sauce unless there's enough wiggle room a the end. I went home with one dollar, almost all of my groceries - I left behind the oranges and the barbeque sauce, and a few stray cartons of yoghurt - and a sense that I had collaborated with the cashier on something somewhat interesting for the day. Most of all, I can tell you exactly how much I spent.

There's a little deli down the street from us, one of those places that seems small at first until you're looking for the low-sodium beef bouillon that you need for a recipe and -- to your utter surprise and amazement -- not only do they stock it, but they have three varieties for you to choose from. It's on the ground floor of a high-rise and shares its modest space with a diner. I hear tell (I have not witnessed this myself) that there's an old woman who goes shopping there on a regular basis and who always arrives at the check-out counter with too many food stuffs than she has the money for. I picture her standing at the counter, counting out the money and the change over again, one dollar, one penny at a time, touching her pockets, her jaw kneading up and down as she tries to figure out what happened to those other bills, or that other wad of coins she was sure she had. The cashier and the manager give each other a tired look before they begin to scan things back through the register again to subtract to the total. I suppose the management just gets used to it and starts to feel like she's a nuisance. The image makes my heart ache. The next person in line, I'm sure, will replace the click of pennies, counted out one by one on the counter, with the slick sound of swiping, plastic on plastic. Without even glancing at the sum, they'll assume that the money, all of it, is just there.