by GIDEON GINRACHMANJINJa-VITUS, Alternate Reality News Service Economics Writer
When Rhododendron Gamete went to her local Starblox (which is wildly successful despite the fact that its drinks are served in cups made up of small plastic interlocking bricks which have a tendency to leak hot fluids onto unwary drinkers and leech toxins into their wood chip frappa-chinos - understanding the appeal is beyond the explanatory ability of most economic theory), she was told that their electronic cash registers were down and she would have to pay in cash. (They were using a tray from a Monopoly set to collect that.) No problem, she replied.
Gamete went to the Starblox on the next corner; unfortunately, she encountered the same obstacle. So, she went to the Starblox a blox and a - sorry, a block and a half away. Same deal. After an hour and a half of futile searching, Gamete decided to forgo her morning caffeine fix and go to work (she's a pneumatic drill instructor); she had to take a taxi to get back into the city and to the army base where she was employed.
A freak thunderstorm (it would have been very comfortable in the 1960s) fritzed the electronic financial system at Starblox headquarters, forcing the company to temporarily accept only cash payments. Unfortunately, Gamete was a millennial who had never carried cash; everything she knew about it she had learned from old movies (ie: those made before 1999 - and doesn't that make you feel old?).
"Dollar bills - they're just, like, colourful pieces of paper," she mused. "So, if I, like, cut up a comic book, would that be considered 'cash?'"
When I told her that it wouldn't, she continued, "Hey! I'm trying to take this whole geezer concept of cash seriously. I mean, I would cut all of my comic book bills into the same size and shape - being able to pay for my morning coca mocha del Grande is no joke!"
When I advised her that the answer would still be no, Gamete pouted, "Boomers ruin everything!"
"I wouldn't say everything," demurred Peter Principice-Keane. "There's...well, okay, we pretty much ganked that. But...then…there is...oh, okay, we kept all of that for ourselves. Then, there's...that - don't even get me started on that! Okay. We have a lot to answer for. Still, we made some of the best potato kugel ever!"
Principice-Keane runs a seminar called "Handling money for whippersnappers and other youthful miscreants" at the Minnie Mimosa Seniors Lodge. He explained that he has to teach millennials not to keep cash in their cheeks, that there are things called "wallets" that were created for the express purpose of holding paper money. He went on to describe other things wallets could hold, eventually going on a twenty minute tangent about baby pictures.
What about more traditional financial literacy seminar subjects like saving and investing money? "Those are advanced concepts," Principice-Keane stated. "We'll probably get to them in a later seminar. But you know what they say: 'You gotta crawl before you can get a kiss!'"
I'm pretty sure they don't say that, but just thinking about thinking about the 87 year-old's private life gave me an all-over body shudder, so I decided not to pursue the issue.
When it first noticed a lot of people withdrawing cash, management at the Bank of Googie - Withers Branch thought they were witnessing a run. They barricaded the doors and donned bulletproof vests and battle helmets. Eventually, a customer who had gone to the bathroom before the emergency had been invoked, emerged and explained the situation, and the manager downgraded the threat to Double AA Obtuse (a sort of yellowish-green on the colour-coded scale).
"That was quite a scare!" said Hyram Haversham, the aforementioned bank manager. "At any given time, the cash we have on hand could only buy you a coca mocha - and not even a del Grande, either. I'm talking a Little Nell, here! So, naturally, we hoard it more jealously than...what do you think would be the better analogy in this case: Smaug or Gollum?"
I told him that, as a journalist, it wasn't my job to judge.
The Biz Whiz tutted at all the commotion. "Sure, electronic commerce can be disrupted in ways that traditional commerce could not," he pointed out. "But on the other hand, keeping cash in your mattress makes it lumpy and uncomfortable to sleep on. There are always trade-offs in economic development."
"What if I scanned the comic book and printed it on high quality paper?" Gamete asked. "Would it be cash then?"
I didn't have the heart to contradict her a third time, so I said yeah, sure, it would be cash then. So, naturally, she asked to borrow enough money to cover the cost of a thousand sheets of heavy bond paper.