To say I am resistant to change is an understatement. I acknowledge that it happens in life — after all, I am about to turn 73 — but that doesn’t mean I embrace or enjoy it.
Rather, I quietly accept change, though not happily, just like I accept that rainy fall comes after summer, and that my 20-year-old spices don’t seem to smell like anything anymore and it is time to buy new jars.
My resistance to change in life was obvious when I was getting coffee with a friend recently and pulled actual change out of my pocket, just as I’ve done since a nickel bought a candy bar. From the expression on his face, you’d have thought I pulled a rabbit out of a hat.
Of course, he could not pass up the opportunity to make fun of me. No one carries change anymore, he said. Why bother, he said. Use a credit card for the coffee (and donut), he said.
I told him not only do I carry change but I carry cash, prompting a look of bewilderment. I worried he might not want to sit at the same table with me.
OK, I’ll admit I don’t need change for pay phones any longer, and coin-fed parking meters are disappearing too. Though it is a lot easier to drop coins into a parking meter than standing out in the snow, trying to get your credit card into the iced-up slot and then waiting while the machine thinks about it.
Putting everything on the credit card? That’s real money to me. There is something special about buying coffee, with or without a donut, from the loose change and dollar bills in my pocket. It’s almost like it’s free. I won’t see it on my credit card; it won’t come out of my checking account as a debit charge; it was just loose money I had on hand. It’s like finding a dollar bill on the street and spending it.
I swear my donut tasted better than my friend’s selection, since he will have to pay for it when his credit card comes due. Free food always tastes better.
And thinking of food, there is one edible area where I have changed. As a kid, teen, young adult and middle-age curmudgeon, I would take great effort to keep the different foods on my plate separate. Not just building dikes and dams to hold back the mashed potatoes and gravy from the vegetables, but ensuring that the salad dressing never touched anything that wasn’t leafy and green. And horrors if the lima beans encroached on the space assigned to bread and butter.
Then, at some magical point, I changed. I figured out I was spending far too much time directing the occupants of my plate, far too much effort accounting for runoff and overflow. It was as if I needed a building permit to eat dinner.
I learned it didn’t matter if the foods touched. I survived, still enjoyed dinner, and stopping making faces when the server missed the target zone on my plate with the gloppy bean casserole.
It got me wondering, maybe there were other things in life I should change. I’ll think about it, but first I am going to buy a cookie with the change in my pocket.
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