Big Tipper

This is a true story in 750 words. Yes, I do feel like an idiot first for doing it and now for telling it. Despite that, the memory of it still makes me smile.

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It was the Sunday after Thanksgiving 2019. I got out of bed while my wife was still sleeping and decided that I needed a treat. I drove south on Route-1 along the coast to a place I know. It's a unique and exceptional convenience store that has grown up as part of a gas station. To call it a convenience store really isn't fair. I've watched them grow that place with homemade pastries and cakes, sandwiches made to order, local beers, a wood fired pizza oven, and now a first-rate coffee shop where they roast their own beans. It's part of my weekend ritual when I'm in a good mood. It gives me a morning drive and a treat when I get there. This morning, a local folk singer was playing in the corner of the coffee shop. I was in good spirits and enjoying the morning, so I got a scone for my wife and 2 large lattes. I left a $3 tip.

The young lady behind the counter, who I would guess was less than twenty, was smiling as she gave me my change and said, "That's a Wisconsin quarter with an extra leaf! You should look at it when you get home!" She was visibly excited and positively beaming. Like I said, I was already in a good mood, but her enthusiasm was contagious, and I was enjoying the exchange.

Now, I'm sixty-four and even with glasses my eyes aren't that sharp anymore. I looked over the quarter briefly and said, "You saw that when you were giving me change?"

She said, "Coins are my hobby." She was so excited.

I asked her to show it to me, but even with my glasses I couldn't see the extra leaf. I know now it was a very small defect under the ear of corn on the back side of the coin. I offered it to her saying, "Would you like it?" She stuttered saying, "No... well... I mean... not if you want it." I could tell she really wanted that coin, but to her credit she had given it to me, and she wasn't going to ask for it back. I admire that kind of integrity and you need to acknowledge it when you see it.

It meant nothing to me and everything to her, so I gave her the quarter, and she was beaming. She thanked me and was turning it over in her hands as I packed up my purchase. I left there thinking I'd made a young girl very happy, and it only cost me 25 cents.

Two days later I found out there are only 5000 of those quarters in existence and they are worth between $60 and $100, depending on condition.

I left a $100 tip for a cup of coffee! No one has done that since Sinatra, and he did it deliberately.

Still, I had just made my last mortgage payment a week before. In an effort to rationalize my actions, I decided I would just call it part of the celebration. After all, I was only out $100 that I didn't really have in the first place, and I kept saying that every time I wanted to smack myself.

I honestly can't say what I would have done if I'd known the value of that coin at the time. I like to think... but who knows? The way I look at it, I didn't drop a big tip. I just gave an excited coin collector something for her collection. There is no doubt in my mind that she still has that coin, and she isn't planning on selling it ever.

Here's the thing: to me, it was just $100 once I knew and not even that when I gave it to her. To her, it was pure excitement. It was a discovery. It was something she dreamed about adding to her collection. I figure that little bit of excitement will come back to others a hundred-fold in the course of her life. Like an unexpected spring seedling in the garden, a young person's excitement and passion for something less ordinary needs to be nurtured and encouraged. If you want to have that kind of excitement in the world, then it falls to the older guys like me to seed it from time to time and hope that the fire lives on in the younger generation.

Like I said, it's a true story. Only the name was withheld to protect the idiot.