I have been to Great Britain two times in the last two decades; during both of these visits the American dollar was at an all time low against the British pound–less than one pound for every two dollars. (Not that I’m taking it too personally; I don’t think it’s a coincidence that both times there was also someone named George Bush in the White House.)
To say that my first visit was financially “challenging” would be an understatement: the poor exchange rate combined with the fact that I was only making $4.25 an hour back then meant that my daily budget was limited to $20 a day. (This in a country where a bed in a youth hostel cost $16. And yes, I know that there is a book out there called Europe on $5 a Day–unfortunately, my trip did not take place back in 1949,when it was published.) With my current income being now (slightly) higher, I had hopes that this trip was going to be more financially successful than the previous one (success being measured by a reduction in the number of times I cried when presented with the bill). Unfortunately, however, I failed to take into account one very crucial difference between my George H.W. Bush era trip and my trip during the reign of Bush the Lesser: whereas before I had been traveling with an equally budget-minded companion, this time I was traveling with the last of the big time spenders: my daughter, Clementine.
Let me qualify that last statement. When I say “big time spender” I mean “big time spender of other people’s money”–when it comes to her own she’s tighter than the pants on a retiree at a Laughlin breakfast buffet. And while this trait is barely tolerable at the best of times, when we’re staying some place where every visit to the cash point (that’s ATM to us yanks) ends with half of my money vanishing into thin air–or, more precisely, into the pocket of some unknown sub-prime mortgage broker–it becomes downright terrible.
Of course, it didn’t help matters that, try as I might, I could not get Clementine to understand what it meant that the exchange rate was so low; to her my reluctance to break out my wallet at every souvenir stand was simply another sign of my distressing provincialism.
“Can I get this (cheap, plastic, made in China) pencil sharpener/coin purse/fridge magnet?” she’d ask. (Emphasis mine). “It’s only 4 ‘ells’.”
Pointing to the pound sign on the price tag (the £), I’d snatch it out of her hand and hiss, “That’s four pounds! That’s like nine dollars!” At which point she’d look at me sadly, shake her head at my quaint, pre-global village ways, and say, “Mom: you’ve got to learn to embrace the currency.” And then we’d be off to lunch, where she would take three bites of a $17 bowl of spaghetti before declaring, “I’m stuffed–let’s go.”
That’s when I realized that meals were another point upon which an 11-year-old and a 40-year old can never see eye to eye; whereas my last partner had recognized the logic behind saving the bulk of our funds for the bare necessities (like beer), and had therefore been content to live on kipper and mustard sandwiches, an 11-year-old will not only insist on three squares a day, but will actually stop eating when they are full or the food is just plain nasty.
Which meant that, in my effort the embrace the few bits of currency remaining in my pocket for a little while longer, several of my meals consisted entirely of the inedible bits of hers. It didn’t matter if it was an unidentifiable green blob; by my calculations, it was a five dollar unidentifiable green blob, which, to me, translated as edible.
Or, at the very least, embraceable.