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Beloved coin wrapping ritual now obsolete

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When I was a small girl, springtime’s arrival in Texas meant planning for summer vacation was on the horizon and so was one of my favorite family rituals: the great coin round-up. 

In some ways the change gathering lasted all year. There were jars for loose money on my parents’ dressers, one on the bathroom sink, and another in the laundry room. As they filled throughout the year, I was usually the one to volunteer to wrap them on hot or rainy days when it was just too miserable to get outside. 

We used the change to help fund gas for vacation, so as mom and dad sat down and started to plan where we were going, it was fun for my sister and I to act like pirates hunting for hidden treasure, searching last minute for spare pennies in couch cushions and in the most unloved crannies of the car or truck. The stragglers topped off piles of coins to fit exactly into the wrappers mom and dad got from the bank. 

It was a relaxing and fun activity. I liked to imagine all the places a rare wheat penny minted in 1914 may have traveled, and wonder who the interesting owners of bicentennial quarters might have been. 

The love of wrapping coins stayed with me as I grew older. The week before I left for college, I took my life savings from my piggy bank and rolled it all up, remembering specifically of grandmas, aunts and uncles who had given me the $5, $10, and $20 bills for birthdays over the years. The bills were nestled among the many coins. I repeated the process after I got my cap and gown. Gas money to move from Texas to Montana came from five semesters of pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters that amassed themselves in a tiny fishbowl on top of my dorm room dresser. My best friend poked fun at the fact that I rarely used my debit card like most people my age. 

My dad laughed when he visited my tiny house in Polson for the first time after I moved in. On the kitchen table was the same tiny fishbowl, collecting cents that I watch grow into dollars. 

I rolled and rolled until the box I kept the coins in was full. I decided last week to cash my loot in. I found an old handbag, and hauled the $150 worth of change — all neatly wrapped in paper — into the bank, where I sadly found out that pre-wrapping your coins is a pastime that lies in a graveyard of obsoletes with telephone landlines and typewriters. 

The nice tellers unwrapped my coins, dumped them into an automated coin sorter, which then re-sorted the change for the bank. Apparently, the final step sorts the coins into the bank’s own paper wrappers. The dirtier coins wouldn’t sort at all. 

I am a bit sad to know I probably won’t wrap coins ever again, and I wonder if kids of the future will ever get to go on a penny safari like my sister and I, or if plastic will be our main source of currency. 

There were lots of hidden money lessons mom and dad tucked into those wrapping sessions, even though I wasn’t cognizant enough to know that I was being taught at the time.

Whatever the future brings, for the rest of my life I’m pretty sure I will occasionally miss those lazy, rainy day dates with my fishbowl, wrappers, and world-traveling coins. 

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