It is nighttime in the bed and breakfast, a time when all things- except for those addicted to an electrical current- must rest. While I adjust to the strange mattress...my wallet, souvenirs, and coins adjust to the light bathing the far walls...as I strain to see them, nervous about where they are.
It isn't the room I stayed in when in the jungle, a room without table and chair, and no lockbox for valuables. On that occasion, I slept with my dinero, that horde of clicking Pesos, moving with my figure, like a magnet.
When I "woke" in the morning, I pulled the sheet and pesos onto the concrete floor. I spent the next few minutes hunting down coins, only to deposit them back on the bed. That was before the shower with the cucarachas and that strange lizard climbing the walls.
When I went into the streets to search for the town market, the pesos weighed down my pockets. Shopping was easy at the market because I bought presents for my parents back home, items that they might not find useful...but at least my pockets were lighter when I went to lunch.
Usually, in the city, I could find empanadas on the street from a small bucket and an equally small chico, who would take my clumsy pesos gladly. He would run home after my cash cleaned out the bucket. He returned barefoot, dirty, and without the pesos. Clearly, the pesos kept him running back home, not the empanadas.
In the evening, he came with Conch Fritters, edible creations because his mother knew how to lace peppers in the batter and cover them with a sweet sauce that eluded every brain cell I ever had. While the other tourists went to one of the ubiquitous Chinese restaurants that inhabited the stinking city, I ate what the locals made, rid myself of coins, and clutched my Imodium like a holy relic.
When I returned to America, I brought back a Peso as a souvenir. Unlike the Euro that somehow gets stuck in the fold of your jacket pocket, the Peso was obnoxious. Everywhere you went, it reminded you that your American money bought you a handful of coins. Nothing says, "third world," like a worthless bill or coin.
Unfortunately, the United States mint, which has not tested the peso market, has created a worthless dollar coin called "The Sacagawea." You cannot go into my local bank and get one. It is no longer available.
Following in the footsteps of the Scagawea is the common copper-colored penny. The latter costs more to make than a cent. The nickel is not far behind. So, the mint has stopped making the lowly penny, and the nickel will follow the penny.
In light of inflation and changing currency policies, it is time to adopt a new coin that can become more useful to the consumer. I propose the addition of a five-dollar coin, slightly larger than Sacagawea, which failed the "importance test" for the size. I propose releasing the five-dollar coin only in the Christmas shopping season, to coincide with the peak of consumer sentiment. A Christmas-themed coin, which would not pander to a small segment of the population but prove a majority-backed theme-oriented win. Following the season, it could act like the Loonie has in Canada, it could simplify the currency system. Whether or not it would replace the five-dollar bill, it would at least add a more realistic piece of currency in an economy where the penny and nickel have become as burdensome as that 1980s Peso.
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