The Devaluation of American Currency

The advantage of being poor is that you have nothing of value to steal. The other day someone broke into my car. If they would have thought for a second, they would have seen that I am driving a 10 year P.O.S., I reside in an apartment that is falling apart, and I live on a street where most cars are so old and worthless that the owners do not even bother to shut their windows or lock the vehicles. Although, a man desperate enough to break into a car of no value probably has little to no common sense.

First he tried to steal my CD player (which is broken anyway), but as he was taking it out, it fell to pieces. He then proceeded to take the unit and throw it on the ground outside in an act of frustration. At this point, I think he realized that he was not going to find anything of value. The perpetrator then scoured my car for anything of value. Of course, there was nothing. They looked in every crevice of the car, and the only thing they stole was my registration and insurance card. After talking to the police I found out that there was absolutely nothing they could do with this information, and I had a good laugh at the situation. At least he saved me trouble of uninstalling my broken cd player and throwing it away.

However, the most humorous part of this whole ordeal was my realization of the diminutive value of the American dollar. Like most people, I keep spare change in my car. Unlike most people, my spare change is little more than a bunch of pennies, a couple nickels, a few dimes, and one or two quarters. The homeless man took the time to dig out all of the change in the container, place it on my drivers seat, and sort through the pile. He proceeded to take out all of the quarters (3 at most), all of my dimes (a total of 2 at last count) and leave the rest. Apparently, nickels and pennies have become so worthless that it is worth the time of a homeless man, who is so desperate that he is willing to break into a decrepit automobile, to sort out the change and only take the "high value" coins. Ironically enough, I counted the change I had left, and there was actually more money in the pennies and nickels than he ended up taking in the quarters and dimes. What has the economy come to?