MUM used to give us a coin or two which she took from the change the milkman had left behind, amid the bowl of blue and red lids.
So much has changed. We wouldn’t call them a “milkman” any more. It would be something longer, like “milk delivery person”.
I’m sure there were occasions when a lady would deliver our milk, dressed exactly the same as the man – white overalls, a money pouch that looked more like a tool belt, one glove and a cap.
Our parents knew their full names. We called them Mr and Mrs Milkman.
I raise this scenario, not for a fascination of milk or gender bias. Rather, I point to the value of the coin my mother would give us as children.
We’d ride our bikes to the corner store. We could have walked, but that would have been less fun. Less prestigious. For to be seen on a Malvern Star dragster was a symbol of status.
The neighbourhood group of children all got on well, but there was a heirarchy, and it evolved around possession.
Yes, the bike was high-end. Other items of status might also have been a special hat. A branded shirt.
Or the kid during marble season for example, who had the tom bowler he’d inherited from his grandfather. “It’s been in the trenches, this has,” I once heard him say to an impressionable young lady.
That coin we were taking into the shop was another possession. With it came power, because if there was one sure way to become popular, it was with a bag of lollies that coin had bought.
You see, this transaction was my first introduction to budgeting. Because that same girl who’d been impressed by the war-time tom bowler also had a penchant for cobbers, a chewy caramel-filled chocolate.
Those were the days when one coin would return multiple lollies. Imagine the horror some years later when I realised that somewhere along the line the situation had reversed, and you required multiple coins for a single lolly.
Regardless, it was a mathematical – and political – juggling act to ensure a desired outcome.
That included enough cobbers to please the young lady, yet leaving enough money for a packet of Fads.
Fads were a not-yet-politically-incorrect white stick with a red tip, resembling the likeness of a cigarette. At 10, being grown up was important and smoking was popular among the adult set.
To be seen sucking one of these lollies with one finger wrapped around either side of the imaginary butt was a grown-up thing to be doing. The result of such mature behaviour was a further rise in status, which was also important because it attracted more friends.
So the single coin would buy me time, because that was the true value of the cobber – not so much a happy girl, but one who was willing to sit with me while she sifted through my well-thought-out packet of sweetness.
And it would buy me status. Which brought more friends, popularity, and an upward cycle of fame and happiness. Power.
To use that coin unwisely, to please people without influence, would have led to a rather different outcome. Instead, I could have been on a bench at the back of the park, wondering what went wrong.
This month there will be people in power who have a very big coin to spend. If they spend it wisely, for the right reasons and for the right people, they know the benefits – and stakes – are high.
They have front and back benches of their own to worry about. Friends to win. Popularity to gain.
In my day, there was no option to borrow more coins. We had what we were given, and we wore the repercussions of bad decisions.
I suppose if I had more coins, I’d have been able to please more people. But that wasn’t the way it worked.
I could have stolen a few coins, which would have made me a bully – and that’s just a short-term fear proposition with no chance of being voted school captain.
And the one time I asked to “borrow” someone else’s coin, they spat into their hand and tried to shake on it. It’s okay, I don’t need it that bad.
Hey Wanda, is it time to cash in the coins in the cookie jar yet?
