Different money
by
Ryszard Krasowski
copyright 07-26-2002
Age Rating: 7 to 127
Twenty, forty, sixty - I had been touching each bill. One hundred, one hundred twenty, one hundred forty - I smoothed out a corner of a bill. Two hundred forty, two hundred sixty - this one is crumpled a little. I smoothed it out. Two hundred eighty, three hundred… THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS!
The bills were lying on the table in front of me. Three rows with five bills in each of them. They were green and each one with an image of one of the American Presidents in the middle of them. My money! I made it! The first money that I made in America! Real dollars! I was rich! Especially when I multiplied dollars by Polish currency. The amount that I came up with gave me giddiness. It was more than a half a million in Polish zloty. I never saw such a heap of money. Well, maybe I saw it. In a movie, when there was a story about a bank robbery. It would have taken two years of work for me in Poland to make that kind of money. But out here? One week of hard work and I am rich. I LIKE AMERICA! IT GIVES A LOT.
Sitting at the table and looking at those green rectangular pieces of paper, I was delighted like a child who was given a new toy. But because I was already grown up, I lit a cigarette and lost myself in thought.
People work and people get money for their work. People are paid wherever they are and for whatever they do. In Poland I had been receiving money for my work too. But I didn’t enjoy it the way I enjoy it now. The money was given to me, so I had taken it, but I hadn’t been putting it down on the table, I hadn’t been looking at it so attentively... Why am I acting differently now? Why am I making these rows of bills? Why am I putting new bills in the upper row and crumpled ones beneath? Why am I looking at them carefully as if I want to memorize each detail on them? Why am I counting this money so many times? Is it like so because I had earned it working hard? Because it has bigger value than the money I used to make? Is it so because the money is green?
I remember from my childhood that once we also had green money. And it was strong money back then. I was able to buy forty rolls at the bakery store for one of those bills. Then someone had decided to change not only a color of the bill but also a shape of it. It wasn’t a rectangular piece of paper any more. It was a metal disc. And although the disc was silvery it didn’t have the value of that precious metal. I was able to buy only four rolls for that new money.
Sometime later another inventor and probably an economist found out that the silvery disc was too big and changed it to a smaller one. He had changed a color of it too. This time the disc was yellow. Like gold. And this time I wasn’t able to buy any roll at all. So I just had been possessing money. As anyone else had.
Having crushed the cigarette in the ashtray, I counted my dollars again, as if I expected them to bulge. THREE HUNDRED! Nothing less, nothing more. But never mind. Next week I should get some more money too. And then I will be super rich.
Rustling with green papers, I divided my money into two piles. One pile for the rent and the other one for living. The first pile was thicker. TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS! The second one didn’t leave me any illusion but I counted it again. There was no mistake. FIFTY DOLLARS! It was hard currency and I couldn’t divide it the way that I wanted to.
Looking at those two piles, I exchanged them in my mind into Polish zloty again. It was stupid of me to do such a thing, because I was here and not over there, but there were my first days in America and I still couldn’t resist a temptation to compare those two things. Anyway, the result was shocking to me. One year and a half of work in Poland for a month of a roof above my head in America!
I DON’T LIKE AMERICA ANY MORE! IT GIVES A LOT, BUT IT TAKES BACK A LOT, TOO.
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Oh, this is very funny!
I know, stuff in America is very expensive, but it's what makes us one of the richest countries in the world.
When my parents and grandparents came here they joined some program and the program gave them each $300 at the beginning to cover all those fees like taxes and stuff, but helped them get jobs so that they can make their own money.
You should've joined, they have ine in every state.
Awesome story!
Next time, pay attention to how much taxes the government takes out. First job, minimum wage, busting my rear end off at the age of sixteen at a job that NONE of those "higher ups" would even consider, getting grimy and yelled at by angry people all day, even attacked two times in one month, scarred by hot metal and liquid, all for only 5.15 an hour. And by the end of the two weeks to get my paycheck, our lovely government had taken more than half of it because I come from "a wealthy middle class family".
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