(16) Accepting the Inevitable?

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As I considered my situation, I remembered a comedian's routine that I had heard on television long ago. The routine went roughly as follows:

I was new in town and really hungry, and I went into this diner to see what I could get to eat. I could get a sandwich for a dollar, but all I had was 75 cents.

I looked down the street and saw a pawnbroker's shop. I went in and asked the pawnbroker if I could pawn 75 cents for 50 cents. The pawnbroker said "Sure, " and wrote it up.

Then I went next door to the shoe repair shop and said, "Want to buy a pawn ticket on 75 cents for 50 cents ?" And the shoe repair guy said "Sure. "

Now I looked in my pocket and I saw that I had a dollar, which was enough to buy my sandwich. So I was happy. And the guy in the diner war happy, and the shoe repair guy was happy, and the pawnbroker was happy.

So where did the quarter come from?

I spent the better part of an hour after that program ended pushing real quarters around a table, trying to find out where the quarter actually had come from. (I was still in high school, and had only recently heard (and accepted!) the notion that banks "create money.") At that tender age, I was willing to entertain the possibility that somewhere within the comedian's tale, there might lie buried another such wondrous mechanism.

Years later, with my theories of light and color, perhaps I'm merely caught up in yet another wondrously spurious mechanism.

Then again, maybe I'm not. Maybe I've actually stumbled onto something significant

Who can say what's really going on here?

My own best answer is that I can't say for sure yet. I haven't spent enough time yet pushing quarters around.

But in the meantime, I'm interested in hearing just about anything that anybody's got to say on the matter.

After all, it behooves a person with a condition such as mine to seek help.

© COPYRIGHT 1993 ROBERT WINTER.  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.