ACCOUNTANT BY DAY

Saturday I did not hang out with my crafty friend like I often do, since my boyfriend and I wanted to spend some time together in the morning and take care of a few things. So I elected to skip my Weight Watchers meeting to stay in bed and get some much needed sleep, and after we finally got up, we went out to run a couple of banking related errands.

A couple years ago my boyfriend began collecting pennies, nickels and dimes in a plastic two liter bottle on top of his dresser. Before we moved into our current house together, he turned in his previous two liter bottle, which contained around $78 worth of change. Apparently his previous score didn’t seem acceptable, because six months or so ago when the jar was full, he refused to accept that no more change could be squeezed in. Instead, he rolled it on the floor and shook it until the coins settled and packed in more tightly, allowing him some more room to drop a few more in. He also weighed it. The first time he did all this, it weighed around 16 pounds. But this weekend it reached its saturation point and he had to admit defeat. He rolled it forlornly on the floor and gave it a couple halfhearted shakes, but not a single dime more could be coaxed to fit inside the bottle, which at that time weighed 21.2 pounds.

So it was kind of a big day for us.  We took the jug of change out to our credit union, which has a giant coin counter in the lobby.  The coin counter has a sign on it that says, “Fast, Easy, Fun!”.  As it turned out, all of these things were true.  My boyfriend took out his little pocket knife and cut a large gash in the side of the plastic bottle, which made me nervous because I was terrified that any moment now someone would notice that a man had a KNIFE in here in THE BANK and WON’T SOMEONE PLEASE CALL THE POLICE.  I tried to stand between him and the people at the counter.  Although I felt a little silly for it, I was relieved when he calmly folded the knife and put it away.

The coin counter was rather entertaining to watch (fun) and simple to operate (easy).  All we had to do was select “English” on a small screen, pour the money in, and wait while it counted, which did not take long (fast).  Then the machine spit out a receipt, which we were supposed to take up to the counter for reimbursement or deposit.  What I found most interesting about the receipt is that it provided helpful statistics related to the composition of his change jar, which had almost doubled in value from his last cash-in.  So the bottle contained 2,089 pennies, 420 nickels and 1,025 dimes worth $144.39.  I am actually rather looking forward to the next time we do this, so I can compare statistics.  I may have to begin contributing my own change to speed up the process.

Oh.  When we were standing in line at the credit union, there was a young man in front of us with those ear lobe stretchy hollow things that I swear I could have thrown a Susan B. Anthony through.  If I said I meant the actual person and not the dollar coin created in her honor, I would not be exaggerating very much.  For some reason I immediately hated this young man and wanted to punch him in the head as punishment for his awful ears.

And that was what we did together on the beautiful Saturday morning we shared.