No small thing, the shine

passing from one person

to another…

A poem I’m working on starts this way. It’s growing out of a conversation with a New York City taxi driver in which he offered small “advices” that wound up making a big difference in a terrible family crisis.

The other night I was hurrying to hospitalize a cat and had to stop to pay a toll. Generally I’m frustrated with tollbooths in the East—why do they have them? In Colorado they scan your license plate from under a bridge; you don’t even have to hit the brakes. And don’t say it’s because of antiquated infrastructure—there used to be tollbooths in Colorado, but when something better came along, they ripped the booths right out. People in the East just put up with stuff, I was thinking.

Anyway, the toll was 75 cents and as usual I’d forgotten about the whole stupid idea because back home they just ding your checking account and also parking meters are all credit cards now, so who needs actual money in your car? All I happened to have was this half roll of old dimes I’d been meaning to see about. Maybe some of them would fit into one of the collecting books I had. Somewhere. In one of the boxes packed up in the garage after the move. So that would be back in Colorado? Ish.

I handed over eight really silvery-looking dimes. Oh, hey! said the toll guy, lighting way up. What are these, old dimes? Give them to me.

Who could resist a gap-toothed grin like that? I handed them right over. All the forbearing Easterners behind me just waited while he happily counted them out. No honking or anything.

I’ll let you make some money, he said. Here’s $3 for $2.50 in dimes. This probably means the dimes were worth more than that, but here I’d neatly postponed the moment of reckoning with the boxes back in Colorado indefinitely. And I didn’t even pay the toll.

I was in a strange location with a sick pet. The dimes found someone who understood their worth. This random little exchange of money on the “free”way seemed to light the night for both of us.

I guess that wouldn’t have happened with a scanner.