{"id":47255,"date":"2025-07-11T07:10:45","date_gmt":"2025-07-11T11:10:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/2025\/07\/11\/small-change-miracle.html"},"modified":"2025-07-11T07:10:45","modified_gmt":"2025-07-11T11:10:45","slug":"small-change-miracle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/2025\/07\/11\/small-change-miracle.html","title":{"rendered":"Small Change Miracle"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I’d not even be thinking of this incident now but for the small miracle of kismet that begraced me. At the checkout aisle with a few days worth of lunches and dinners (or “din-din” as my father liked to call it) I reached for the familiar credit card. It was not there. Mind briefly sprinted through any possible recent scenario in which the card could have been stolen. No way. Imumbled something about “Where’s my credit card?” I could tell the cashier, who had already fully rung up the purchase, sensed my disquiet and put on her metaphorical boxing gloves. She probably thought back to familiar incidents of this nature where customers claimed to have no money and the manager has to come out and everybody ends up bawling their eyes out. Okay, maybe it wouldn’t go that far. Truth told this was not a gutstopping situation. Worst case would be that I ask them to leave the stuff in my reusable bag (a sort of collateral) while I get my damned credit card and come back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

None of this was necessary. By some fiduciary miracle I not only had cash on my person, but I had just barely enough down to a fucking dime to cover the charges for these sandwiches and burger patties and a pair of pears and two bananas. I virtually never have more than $20 cash on me but I just happened to have withrawn $60 in advance of doing laundry and other cash-only transactions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The final amount due, $34.77, was at first magically met with exactly $34 in bills. The next small change miracle came down to my last dime. I typically keep quarters on hand for the rare opportunity to make a payphone call. I had three quarters and one dime to make this cash purchase a reality. I still find it minutely miraculous. I left the 8 cents in change in the tip jar, leaving me penniless. The credit card was at home, mistakenly placed with the debit card that I only take with me when ATM cash is needed. I don’t know why I cannot rotate the image above but I’m using the mobile version of WordPress and it has its limitations. Oh, wait, I figured it out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’d not even be thinking of this incident now but for the small miracle of kismet that begraced me. At the checkout aisle with a few days worth of lunches and dinners (or “din-din” as my father liked to call it) I reached for the familiar credit card. It was not there. Mind briefly sprinted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-text","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paumAn-cib","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47255\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}