The $130 bill

It is said that the whole is worth greater than the sum of it's parts. That a beast or a machine separated to it's individual components would be rendered essentially worthless as the work that they are intended to perform would no longer be possible.

I've often wondered whether that same concept applies to me. My condition may not be as poor as some of my peers who, take the penny for instance, require nearly two cents worth of labor and resources to manufacture. But, as the five dollar bill, am I all that better off? Considering that, at best, what value I hold in society is purely arbitrary, stemming not from any inherent function I serve, but from a potential which I represent. Considering this, my value has declined steadily from the moment my forefathers were printed into existence in 1861. Since then, should I have retained my original value only I would not be a $5 bill but a $130 bill.

These thoughts crossed my mind as Phillipe pulled me out of the cash register and handed me to a boy, whose name I would never learn, upon whom the product of fate and time had played a cruel game and had wore him down to a little stub. His shoulders, a few shackles of bones, hanging so low, and his back hunched so deep, that one would believe that the few tatters he wore were sown of thin threads of rebar and steel. His pants contained all the memories of the many jobs he had held through his premature adulthood: spots of paint, streaks of grass and mud, palm-sized gaps. He shoved me into his left pocket so carelessly that I feared being blown out by a swift gust, in his right hand he carried a single grocery bag containing bread, several bottles of water, and a prescription antibiotic.

As he approached the exit I sensed the searing light of the outside world which I had all but forgotten following my long residence in that lonesome cash register. He had taken no more than three steps when a sudden burst of scorching hot air blew me out of his pocket, he tossed his grocery bag onto the ground and ran in pursuit. Grappling with the air as though pleading for mercy from some greater force. Every time I slipped through his fingers he thought of another ingenious obscenity to bark out at all who cared to listen -- no one cared to listen.
I glided in this fashion, barely a finger's distance out of his reach, for no more than fifty feet before fortune would have it that I should find a small coupe under which to slide. There, on a stagnant pool of rain water, I soaked for five seconds as the boy contorted and gesticulated in my direction, tickling me with the tips of his fingers. A car horn honked twice, causing the boy to break his efforts just long enough for the apathetic driver to skid off, and pull me off the ground with him.

I would not travel far this time before I fell into the gentle embrace of a new born infant, laying in an open carriage, escorted under the close watch of a young mother, who, dressed in the latest fashion of the time, commanded a class well above that of the rest of the patronage.
Before she could complete a witty remark about how her child had finally started earning his keep, the now despondent boy had sprinted, tripped and dashed onto the carriage, producing a most hysterical howl from the woman, but not so much as a giggle from the baby.

"Please ma'am!" said the boy, having not the energy or the clarity of mind to utter anything more, as he grabbed me.

"Have you no shame?" shouted the young woman, as she smacked him upside his head with both her hands. "...how dare you! Let go of that!" I slipped through the cracks of the boy's fingers and found myself in a matter of seconds folded neatly and handed to the child.

"But that's my money, ma'am!" he whimpered between forced gasps of air.

"The day I should believe such a blatant lie!" said the woman, a contemptuous scowl piercing right into the boy's eyes. "If you don't pull yourself off of the carriage I will scream again and you shouldn't be so fortunate as to escape without consequence then." At this moment the boy realized that he had left his bag on the ground.

"Ma'am if you would care to follow me, I could prove that I had received $5 in change no more than three minutes ago from this very store. My bag with the receipt is right over..." As he turned to face the entrance he saw no bag, no loaf of bread crushed under the hurried sole of a vacuous villain, or an empty bottle of pills strewn across the asphalt, not even so much as a torn receipt blowing in the air to chase in futile effort. The lady scoffed and rushed away, another occasion in her life deserving perhaps a momentary reflection with her friends for amusement and ridicule, only then to toss into that endless oblivion of forgotten cruelties and injustices.

As the child chewed on me, I watched the boy stand, hunched forward, his head bowed down as I remember him so well in the store. But now empty handed, beads of sweat drying on his face before the unforgiving heat of the sun.

What bliss it was, if even for a mere moment, to be something more.