A curious side effect of inflation is the psychological change that occurs in the human attitude toward money. It is as if we have a built-in psychological defense to protect us against the mental ravages threatened by declining currency.
Recently, for example, without even noticing it, I abandoned the habit of carrying all paper money in my wallet and took to stuffing bills of $1 and $5 denominations into my trouser pocket, which in the past had been habitually reserved for items of small value, like coins.
In my rigidly organized psychological system, the wallet was the repository for things of value—paper money, credit cards, permits issued by the more terrifying bureaucracies, lists of clothing sizes of persons who might retaliate if holidays and their birthdays were not observed with gift presentations, instructions for shipment of the remains in case of abrupt demise in some remote location and so forth.
The pants pocket, more easily, more thoughtlessly accessible to the right hand, has always been the place for things whose loss would not be a disaster. Toothpicks collected from the delicatessen counter, coins, chewing gum wrappers, lint and messages to telephone editors, lawyers and press agents immediately.
The fact that coins were relegated to this pocket reflected an earlier inflation that must have occurred during the 1940’s. Before World War II, I distinctly remember treating coins with great respect. In fact, I can still remember every detail of a day in 1935—the sun was shining and there was a slight autumn nip—when I looked down and saw a dime gleaming up from the sidewalk. I have never felt so rich again.
In any case, at that time coins were stored in one of those small fake leather coin purses associated with caricatures of the miser. By 1945, however, they had been relegated to the pocket with the toothpicks and lint.
By that time my psychological organization had been expanded to include a wallet, an accessory so alien during the prewar years that it was associated only with bankers and gangsters. The wallet was the place for what was then known as folding money. “Real money,” it was called. Real money was a dollar.
A year or so ago, I began noticing dollar bills turning up among the coins and lint, having been stuck there thoughtlessly, with casual contempt, as stuff not worth the dignity of a place in the wallet. Obviously, my psychological system was undergoing a change of which I was scarcely aware. Without any conscious thought at all, I had marked the dollar down to the value of flotsam or, perhaps, only jetsam.
Then, a couple of months ago, reaching in the pocket for a dollar to buy a magazine that used to cost 25 cents, I was startled to come up with a $5 bill.
The thing was obviously spreading, like one of those monstrous diseases from outer space that bemuse writers of science fiction thrillers. Several times after that I had the same experience—going into the pocket for a dollar and coming out with a $5 bill.
At first, somewhat alarmed, I stuffed the big bill into the wallet, but it left me uncomfortable. What, after all, was a $5 bill anymore? Did it deserve the dignity of the wallet? Every time you hopped out of a cab after sitting motionless for twenty minutes in rush-hour traffic, you had to come across with a $5 bill.
The wallet should be reserved for more powerful stuff than this. At the rate people were demanding $5 bills, you could wear out a wallet in two weeks if you had to manhandle it for each demand.
The $5 bill went permanently to the pants pocket along with lint, toothpicks, the ridiculous pennies and quarters and the wretched, bloodless, decaying, unworthy $1 bills.
This created immense psychological relief: When one stopped thinking of $5 bills as “real money,” the pain and outrage occasioned by being charged $1.25 for a copy of Newsweek, $6 for a pound of veal and $3.50 to sit twenty minutes in a taxi without shock absorbers or springs became almost tolerable.
Not long ago when a waiter brought me a $135 bill for dinner for six, I scarcely even screamed, and I no longer look with awe upon fellow New Yorkers who pay $110 a month for parking space for their cars. The people across the street who rent two-bedroom apartments for $2,200 a month still leave me agape in such wonder as will be dispelled, I suppose, only when I shift the $20 bills from wallet to pocket.
And indeed, why not? Those things, after all, aren’t really dollars anymore. They’re lire.