Hidden billions as dead as dimes among my socks

WHENEVER I return from a journey, whether it’s local or foreign, I empty my trouser pockets of small change and toss it into the top drawer of my wardrobe, which happens to be my sock drawer.

No matter how carefully I budget, I always end up with a few unspent coins. The result is that I am constantly finding money in my socks – it’s a most odd collection of Canadian cents, British pence, American dimes, old Greek drachma, Deutsche Marks, francs and a large number of 10c and 5c South African coins.

I seldom stand in a supermarket queue counting out the exact amount that’s popped up on the cash register. I’m too embarrassed to keep the rest of the queue waiting while I count out 98c in small change, so I do what I imagine most of us do and plonk down a R10 note and get a pile of small change to add to my sock drawer.

I regard the coin collection with deep guilt because it’s all dead money, and I killed it. Money in itself – coins and notes – is useless until it is spent. Those notes and coins represent somebody’s labour and they can be exchanged for goods or services. That’s how the world works.

When I pay a car guard R5 for waving his arms at me I am actually giving him what I received for writing two words in this column in exchange for two minutes of his arm waving. He can take home my two words and exchange them in his local spaza shop for a candle to light his home for the evening.

The spaza shopkeeper can take my two words and exchange them for a slice of cheese for his family supper. It may just be a small disc of inferior quality metal, but already, in just one day, it has been converted to parking directions, illumination, food, warmth and it’s still ready to become a box of matches or a lollipop or part of a taxi fare.

The moment I drop it into my sock drawer it becomes just a disc of useless metal.

Just as Cinderella’s magic coach reverted to a pumpkin (and probably a squashed one after Cindy sat on it) my coin stops being anything valuable and becomes a lump of tin when I take it out of circulation.

I’m talking about the bottom end of the financial ladder, because that’s where we journalists live, but the same principles apply anywhere up the scale, even to bankers and politicians.

As long as their billion dollars of small change is used to pay their lackeys and lawyers, people can buy stuff, so other people are paid for making the stuff and others get to buy their mistresses jewellery so jewellers can send their kids to university, and so on.

But when the politician hides his billion in a bank account where he hopes nobody will find it, it becomes simply a number on a balance sheet. It’s as dead as the dimes and drachmas among my socks.

Last Laugh

For their first wedding anniversary, the husband bought his bride an incredibly beautiful and rare antique porcelain dinner service.

His friend was critical. “Don’t you think that was rather extravagant?” he asked.

“Not really,” said the husband. “for one thing, she’ll definitely never ask me to wash the dishes.”