21 : Coin Collectors
The Botanical Gardens – myself and three youngsters – ready for a lot of sun, a lot of heat, a lot of water, and probably not that many flowers. Because two boys still somehow outnumber two girls. For that matter, I don’t think I stopped to fully examine a single bloom throughout the entire five hours of our stay.
I don’t remember who started running through the fountains, but it didn’t take long for Puck, Heidi, and Yali to completely soak themselves before the morning had ended. No regrets. Except for Puck’s feet.
“Mom, my shoes are completely ruined now. The padding came out. And they hurt my feet.”
I was pretty sure he could handle it. So we walked on. Although he later informed me that he was probably “an inch taller” from all of his blisters.
I’m not sure at what point it started, but somewhere between the Ottoman Garden and the Rose Garden, Puck, Heidi, and Yali discovered all the coins in the fountains. Sometimes these little adventures take off before I realize what’s happening. By the time all three of them were on the ground on their stomachs rooting through piles of water-logged pennies, I realized this had officially become a “thing”.
“MOM! LOOK!” Puck held up a somewhat oxidized coin that felt light enough to be plastic.
“That’s from Moldova,” I told him, briefly having forgotten that Moldova was still an actual country.
Sometime later in this aquatic endeavor, Heidi hauled out a Mexican peso and added it to the collection.
Was this thievery, I asked myself? And then I considered – what was the Botanical Gardens going to do with a Moldavian 25-bani piece anyway? Still, we pushed most of the mountains of change back into the water.
The coin exchange was in full swing in the back seat as we left for ice cream. Heidi’s goal was to collect one coin from each year, so any leftover pennies were discarded to Yali.
“You want a 2008?” she asked him. “You can have it. It means nothing to me.”
“Well, your Mexican coin will be worth a lot of money some day anyway,” Puck told her.
“Yeah, when Mexico is taken over, I’ll be rich from this coin.”
Clearly, these two were privy to some top secret information I had missed.
“Can’t I have the peso? I’ll give you a quarter dollar instead.”
“No. I want it.”
“We won’t argue this much when we’re older, you know.”
“We don’t really argue that much anyway. This is only like our second argument.”
Then they switched to talking politics.