There’s nothing like crunching after dinner cheese and crackers over intelligent conversation. And where oh where do they keep finding these “fresh” topics of discussion?

I was quite amused to recently find myself in the middle of a very animated discourse about money. Not that you’re really surprised on that count? But I’ll stop beating about the bush, we were debating at what point we stop picking up dropped, or discarded, coins we see lying on the footpath, or in the kerbside gutter.

Enlightening after dinner talk surely. Some points of view were presented quite passionately. Someone insisted she picked up every coin she saw, considering it to be “good karma” of sorts. It seems the humble five cent piece leads to bigger and better things, like a 20 cent coin, which in turn eventually leads to the one dollar coin.

Were we to follow this “argument” through to its… logical conclusion, I expect you would one day end up claiming the grand prize, the one hundred dollar note.

Another claimed never to pick up any coins whatsoever; he didn’t “need” to. Notes of any denomination were another matter however. Others said they would pick up one or two dollar coins, but nothing less.

I tended to agree with the last point of view. Though if I saw a tasty 50 cent coin, I’d just have to consider stooping down and bagging it. Then again logistics and location will play a big role in determining my “plan of action”.

I was at the bus stop one morning a few weeks ago. Preoccupied in my usual early morning semi conscious daze. Alert yet inert. Then a glimmer caught my eye; a shiny two dollar coin! It was almost on the gutter/road cusp, and therefore potentially in view of all at the bus stop. Yet no one seemed to have noticed it…

Therein lay my problem however. Do I walk over to the gutter, and in front of all assembled, brazenly, and at the same time, non-chalantly, pick up this gleaming prize? I mean some of these people could have been neighbours. I may never live down the embarrassment; especially if it should turn out one of those gathered was exclusively a “note collector”.

Oh, the shame of being seen as only going after the “small game”. But crunch time was rapidly approaching. A bus was nearing the stop and I would have to act quickly. Then I had an idea, it wasn’t the bus I waiting for anyway, so once it had picked up its passengers, and fewer people were left at the bus stop, I would “make a grab for the booty”.

Fortune does not favour the foolish it seems. The approaching bus pulled into the stop, and before I could blink, a schoolboy stepping off the bus had spotted and retrieved the damn coin, right before my eyes!

Needless to say I didn’t share this tale of woe with my dinner companions. What a shame, two dollars almost buys a coffee. Maybe it is a “karma” thing after all. If only I had picked up that five cent coin I saw yesterday…