So Money

I don’t know if this holds true for the rest of the country, but the toll booths along the Dulles toll road are the largest distributors of random coinage in the area. Anything that does not fit the nickel, dime, quarter standard is spit back into the return slot under the collection basket. It’s a little bit hidden and kind of out of reach if you drive an SUV (unless you open the door and hold up traffic for people dying to get to, I don’t know, the Zany Brainy at the Reston Town Center*) but it’s down there. Usually it’s filled with slugs, unpopular American coins, less popular foreign coins and whatever random pieces of metal toll jumpers throw in. And often times there are also normal quarters that just didn’t register with coin reader. On most trips to the far most regions of NOVA you could net more than the 75¢** Chuck Robb forces you to throw in.

Example: Last week’s trip to see the G’s mom’s coronation in Faraway, Va scored us this set of randomness…

1. A United Arab Emirates piece honoring a coffee pot
2. Canada’s tribute to their Elkin forefathers
3. A US Fiddy cent piece***
4. A Metro Bus Token
5. Belgium? Sentinelese quarter?
6. A French 20 cent Euro featuring Lady Liberté on one side and the map of Europe on the other. The one that makes Scandanavia look all wangy.

We also won a handful of moldy pennies and dimes so old that their ridges had worn off. And all I had to do was sit through one church service about the Elephant Man. Lutherans rock!

* Awwww. I saw Pulp Fiction on a first date with what turned out to be a cute super-Christian girl at the RTC. Turns out Pulp Fiction with a cute super-Christian girl is not a good idea for a first date.

** I learned to “type” on my mom’s old typewriter and just spent 5 minutes looking for the “¢” symbol on this here modern cent-free keyboard. Little ¢, I miss you.

*** I never knew John Kennedy, John Kennedy wasn’t a friend of mine, and you, senator, could never have John Kennedy’s awesome faux-hawk. It never occurred to me that coins not only commemorate our dead Presidents but also their fantastic haircuts. Thing’s so tall it blocks the E and R in “liberty.” Sweetness.