My PawPaw Ronald always keeps his change in the pocket of his worn down light washed blue jeans, the holey, rough fabric covered in stains telling a whole different story of its own.
He would always reach into the front pocket, and pull his dark, leathery, work-worn hand back out filled with several different coins. The Copper pennies clinking with the spareling with the silver of nickels, dimes, or quarters.
He never bothered to put the random coins in a piggy bank, or even in a bag to keep up with them. He left so much around that when I need some lunch money, I could always just ask him and he would go and grab his old jeans. If PawPaw was washing his main jeans, he would go to the bathroom, and grab a handful of stray coins out of the box that was kept for his stuff on the top shelf on the vanity.
Everytime I would suggest that he let me count out all of his money so that he can take it all to the bank to cash in, he would only put his hand on his hip, and cocked an eyebrow. “Why would I want to do that? What if I need only a few coins and all I have on me is bills? I would just be collecting more coins. Back to where we came from.”
One time, when I was younger, around the age of fourteen, my Pawpaw got an old cigar box. The box was yellow on the sides, and had stains on it from the years it has been sitting in an old room. All four sides of the box were embossed with swirls, and the brand of the cigar. Pawpaw put pennies only inside of this box, because he called pennies a waste of space because that is what the majority of the change was.
He put the old box in the floorboard of his old red Ford F-150, slightly hidden underneath the one row seat. This box only took care of about two thirds of the problem with all of his spare change.
He still had hundreds of coins weight down his pockets. I kept waiting for all of the change to just wear a hole into the pocket, and all of the money to fall out. At least if this happened, we would not have to deal with it all.
Everytime Pawpaw would take a step, his pockets would jingle like christmas bells in december.
Last year, I finally got him to sort out all of the change, and let me and my little sister count it out for him. It took us a full three days, because someone kept getting us distracted and we would lose count and have to start all over again, painfully enough.
We got up at seven in the morning, ate our breakfast, and got back to work on counting.
We both had a stack of coins, and we had to keep them seperate in fear of having to start over.
We both think that PawPaw kept messing us on purpose, because he would walk over to the table, and accidentally bump it, knocking over all of the pills of change, both counted, and not counted ones.
After counting it over twice, just to be sure, Pawpaw had around sixty dollars. I was honestly surprised, I thought there would have been more money than only sixty dollars, after all the years of collecting, and my time spent counting.
We finally got it all taken to the bank the day after we got it all added up, and Pawpaw got his cash handed right to him.
But I think it was just a waste of time now. Because he is back up to pocketfuls of coins again. All he ever has now is his pockets full of loose change.
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