The Tale of a $5 Bill

On August 24^th, 2011, my mother was saying goodbye to me at the security checkpoint in Chicago’s O’Hare airport. As a last minute gesture to help her daughter, she gave me a bunch of cash just in case. I assured her that I really didn’t need it and that the American dollar was a joke in Europe, but she persisted and I eventually gave up and accepted the money. I didn’t spend much of it, apart from purchasing a few last minute airport snacks to compliment the sandwiches I had packed for my long journey ahead. A few days later, some friends and I were going over to an exchange bureau to convert our traveler’s checks and American dollars into Euro to pay our apartment deposits and place the rest in our new French bank accounts. I thought I had collected all the last minute cash from my mother before going, but I was wrong. I had left one measly $5 bill in the bottom of my bag.

At first I laughed at how useless this bill was to me. There was no point in exchanging it now, because I’d only get between three and four euro for it when switching it. I hoped that I would at no point in the year be so desperate for such a small amount of money, and packed the American currency away in a small pocket of my purse. It sat there for quite a while, until one day after I had been in Europe for quite some time I opened up that small pocket to look for something and there he was, Abraham Lincoln, reminding me of where I came from. I thoroughly enjoyed this bill’s new purpose.

I never got terribly homesick over here, apart from a few incidents. But throughout the year, whenever I was down, bored, or just needed something to smile at, I’d pull out the bill and it would help quite a bit. So I decided that I would replicate this lovely tool when I go home, but the inverse. I now have a 5€ bill tucked into the same small pocket of my purse, and always will. This relatively small piece of blue and metallic paper has now become the physical embodiment of everything that these past nine months were. I’m going to miss Europe very much. I had the pleasure of meeting such amazingly intelligent, funny, and caring individuals who I never will forget. We might not see each other for a long time. We might not ever see each other ever again.  Either way, I’ll never forget about you and I’ll always carry your memory with me. And now that’s a literal statement.

And of course, I hope I’m never in such a place where I’m so desperate that I need to exchange this bill for American currency. Because it still won’t be worth that much in the scheme of things…and who knows if it’ll be worth anything at all for long.  ;)