There was a time when finding a quarter meant you could buy something.

Not something important.

A gumball.

One turn of a machine.

Maybe three minutes on a parking meter if the city was feeling generous.

But still.

Commerce.

Now I find a quarter at the bottom of my bag and think, nice little metal circle.

THE QUARTER USED TO HAVE A JOB

This is what I miss.

Coins had assignments.

Quarter: useful.

Dime: occasionally useful.

Nickel: suspicious.

Penny: mostly administrative.

You kept quarters in your car because eventually something was going to demand one from you.

Parking meters.

Arcades.

Laundromats.

Vending machines.

Those little machines outside grocery stores filled with temporary tattoos, sticky hands and one extremely desirable plastic ring.

You’d put the quarter in.

Turn the thing.

Something came out.

Beautiful technology.

NOW EVERYTHING COSTS $7

We somehow skipped directly from “that’ll be 75 cents” to:

$6.50.

$8.

$11, but it comes in a cute little can.

There is almost nothing left that costs a casually insignificant amount of money.

Even buying something stupid has become a decision.

A coffee is a transaction now.

A little treat requires Apple Pay.

You tap your phone and deliberately avoid looking at the screen.

Approved.

Don’t worry about it.

WE ALSO STOPPED TOUCHING MONEY

I don’t know how much anything costs anymore.

I know what my bank account says.

Different thing.

Cash made you participate.

You handed someone a twenty.

They gave some of it back.

There was evidence.

Now I can spend $46 by double-clicking the side of my phone.

Very elegant.

Possibly too elegant.

At least losing twenty dollars used to require losing twenty dollars.

I MISS CHEAP, STUPID THINGS

Not because they were better.

Most of them were objectively terrible.

The gumball lost its flavor before you left the store.

The arcade machine ate your quarter.

The temporary tattoo looked nothing like the one pictured on the machine.

Didn’t matter.

You weren’t conducting a cost-benefit analysis.

It was 25 cents.

Do it.

There’s something nice about an amount of money small enough to make a bad decision without having to call it a bad decision.

25¢

I saw one of those old gumball machines recently with 25¢ printed on the front.

And honestly, that might be the most vintage thing about it.

Not the machine.

Not the gumballs.

The price.

Twenty-five cents.

For an entire object.

Imagine.

Anyway, I have three quarters in my bag right now.

Apparently I’m sitting on generational wealth.