The Best in New Piggy Banks

For a few weeks now our doorway/stair gate has been making a sort of clackety noise when lifted from its hinges and moved into another room. It sounded as though a piece of plastic had broken off inside and was tumbling around.

This evening when I moved it from the bottom of the steps into the kids’ bedroom doorway, it sounded as if someone had been using it as a piggy bank. Except, really, it’s better than a piggy bank because most piggies these days have a plug in the bottom, and the only way to get the money back from the gate is to take a sledgehammer to it. It’s burglarproof.

At first the tinkling confused me, but as I tilted the gate this way and that I suddenly had a vision of Daddy’s spare change spread out on top of the record player. A certain toddler that lives in this house is beginning to show a little ankle at the cuff of his pants which means he is getting taller. Places that were once unreachable are now very reachable indeed.

The combination of pennies and the nice penny-sized slot in the bottom of the gate were apparently too much of a temptation for him. When questioned as to what was causing the delightful chinking sound in the gate he told us with an excited smile that he had stashed pennies in there.

It made me a little sad to tell the boy that what he thought was such an inspired idea shouldn’t be repeated. I suppose Daddy will have to be more mindful of leaving money lying around the house, or the next time the boy may hide the milk and egg money inside the VCR.

How I Became A Crook

The kids and I went to the toy store last evening to pick out a small toy for each of them to unwrap on Easter Sunday. My son also had four dollars from Valentine’s Day that had been given to him to use at the toy store, so it seemed a good time to spend it. I had previously placed the money into his coin bank for safekeeping.

As I sat shaking the contents of my son’s bank out over his bed I felt I was remiss in not having a lookout posted at the door to warm me of any approaching persons. It felt like robbery to remove the four one-dollar bills. Random loose change fell out with a satisfying “clink” into a neat little pile; the paper money, on the other hand, had to be pried through the round opening in the bottom of the bank and some of it was rather difficult to coax out.

The fact that it seemed the job would require tools made it seem even more unorthodox. My palms began to sweat, and even though I was the only adult at home my adrenaline was under the impression that we were in a race against the clock: that at any moment the law would show up and I would forever be ashamed to call myself Mommy.

It was such a horrid experience that I have resolved never to keep spending money in the coin bank again. My offending hands felt so dirty when they put that crisp green paper into my wallet. From now on, a plain white envelope with my son’s name on it will have to suffice as a reasonable storage place for money that’s not meant to be saved.