Madam – I may be an old man, but when I see a coin laying in the street I will still bend down and pick it up, creaky bones or not.
This happens quite often so I can only surmise that people in general do not care much about ‘small money’. It seems that if it falls out of their hand and onto the street they just leave it there. Too bad.
As a child I was taught that pennies will make a shilling and shillings will make a pound. I was also given a piggy bank to encourage me to learn to save. I believe it would be good if we impressed on our children that whilst we must not worship money as such, we must still appreciate that even the smallest coin has a value, and is worth to be saved.
We must also realise that, strictly speaking, all money belongs to the Government, we are only allowed to trade with it, we never actually ‘own’ it.
You are not allowed to drill a hole in that pretty two Rand coin just because you would like to have the Union Buildings adorn your key ring. The same applies to that beautiful two-metal five Rand coin.
In our fast moving world the cashier at the supermarket is often not too happy when you pay with a handful of small coins.
But then again, over a period of time, they gave them to us in the first place. So don’t feel too guilty about it.
M.
