MAKING CHANGE
Ndumiso Ncgobo on finding lost treasure at the bottom of your handbag (or pocket)
HAVEN’T been blessed with too many major victories in my life. The significant triumphs have come with the regularity of a lunar eclipse that coincides with a payday Friday evening in spring. You know, when one can actually go outside and stare at the sky.
I’ve lost more tennis matches than I’ve won in my amateur “career”. I’ve lost more debates than I’ve won. Vumvum, my sixyear-old, beat me in a best-of-five rock, paper and scissors contest half an hour ago. I agree: I should walk around with a huge “L” stamped to my forehead.
So, over the years, to avoid constant disappointment, I have lowered the bar as to what constitutes winning. As a result, I have perfected the art of seeking and appreciating all the tiny lil’ victories that come my way.
Take last Tuesday. I walk into the supermarket, make my purchases and head for the till. The total is R36.75. I open my wallet and — wait, could it be that I actually have enough coins to pay for the entire thing from the coin compartment? I’m getting excited because in my pathetic little existence, getting rid of a substantial number of coins is a huge victory.
Nothing annoys me more than what my missus calls “the wallet bulge”. You know, when you’re on a shopping trip and you keep getting change until it piles up so much you could use the wallet for street football? Afterwards, you’re walking around the mall with this misshapen monstrosity in your jeans pocket looking like an amoeba watching X-rated movies.
The feeling I get when I can offload most of those coins in one go is akin to the elation Orlando Pirates die-hards experience when they win their once-in-a-decade trophy. It’s what Hollywood alphamale-about-town Charlie Sheen calls “#winning” on Twitter.
So anyway, there I am, counting out the coins and getting nipple stands at the possibility that I might actually have R36.75 in coins. Three R5 coins. Seven R2 coins. Four R1 coins. (So far, so good.) Two 50c coins. Eight 20cent coins. (Sweet Mary and the heavenly choir of seraphim, I might be en route to The Rapture here.) Five 10-cent coins. (Okay, how many of these five-cent coins do I have?) And now I’m starting to feel like Usain Bolt in that last 20m stretch because I’m counting them out. One. Two. Three . . . 13! Ha ha! I win! Pravin and Gill are the losers!
Yes — Pravin Gordhan and Gill Marcus. I’m too stupid to know who is responsible for us keeping that obsolete five-cent coin in circulation, so I choose to blame those two every time my wallet is deformed by those pointless coins. Shouldn’t the rule be that the lowest coin denomination should at least be able to get you a Chappie? I’m so passionate about the scrapping of the fivecent coin that I’ve considered taking the matter to the highest court in the land to sue Gill and Pravin for “deformation of wallet”. But the recent changes of personnel over there have dissuaded me. Instead, I’ve decided to pray hard enough until their dark, bean-counting hearts are softened.
No, you’re not hallucinating. Counting out five-cent coins at supermarket tills is close to the height of what I call winning in life. But it’s not just coins that lift my spirits soaring heavenwards in exultation. Sometimes it’s the hard currency that I’m told is now the compulsory deposit on collection plates across church denominations every Sunday.
When winter started a few months ago, I remembered a bulky thermal jacket the colour of a dung beetle’s loot I’d worn when I went to Soccer City to watch the 2010 World Cup final. When I put my hand in one of the inside pockets, I fished out two pieces of paper. A till slip dated the 1th of July 2010 and a crisp R100 note folded in half.
I was torn between ululating or bursting into a traditional song from the Valley of a Thousand Hills, like a backup dancer from Juluka. I smelled the crisp note, rubbed it between my thumb and index finger and thanked the ancestors.
Ah, the joy of finding money you didn’t know you had! It is, however, with great sadness that I must report that the story did not end well. In my house we have a wallet-raiding treaty not too dissimilar to the one Samora Machel signed with Die Groot Krokodil.
When I’m short of cash I can raid her purse and she can also raid my wallet. That note was fished out of my wallet and used to purchase some random, insignificant items such as cans of tuna and rolls of loo paper or something. I think my winning R100 note deserved a much better fate than being exchanged for bum wipes.
Spring is upon us. There’s no better excuse to find those little
I’m getting excited because getting rid of a substantial number of coins is a huge victory Shouldn’t the rule be that the lowest coin denomination should at least get you a Chappie?
winning moments. Find that solitary beer at the bottom of the cooler box the morning after a braai. The ice will be half-melted. The paper label will be floating in the Antarctic water in there. The beer will be staring back at you, calling out your name, sayin’: “Come get me Papa” in an exotic tongue from the Amazon. Grab it, hug it to your chest. Start talking dirty to it in the Native American language of the Sioux: “From now on, you shall be known as Winning Tiny Victories.”LS