Evie: “Can we go to the dollar store? I want to buy  a dollar to put in my piggy bank to save for ice cream!”

Evie likes to find pennies and other coins on the ground and put them in her piggy bank. Because of a book we have, when we asked her what she was saving her money for, she said ice cream.

She doesn’t have a real handle on how much money is worth. One penny is equivalent to one quarter. Each is “one money”. We’ve tried to explain to her things like, “This one is worth 5 of that one,” or showing her 10 pennies in one hand and a dime in the other hand. She doesn’t get it. She tried to exchange one money (a penny in this case) for a book at the store.

::Evie opening birthday cards::
“More money! I’m going to save all of my money for college!”

However, all money isn’t created equal. For some reason she has it in her head that coins are money. Paper money isn’t real money. You save paper money for college, you save real money for ice cream. In fact, when Orlan tried to give Evie a dollar bill, she looked at it suspiciously, but she refused to take it. She wanted ice cream money.

Because Evie gets such joy from change, and change costs relatively little, people started giving it to her all the time. If you can make a child happy for the price of one penny, that’s money well spent. The problem is, it has turned her into quite the panhandler.

Evie, holding out her hand: “Do you have any money? Does anyone have any money?”

The sad thing is, this tactic has been working like gangbusters everywhere she goes. Nobody can resist emptying their pockets to her. She earned something like $40 on the trip (granted, most of that was birthday money)(for college of course).

When panhandling wasn’t enough, she turned to other skills, like pick-pocketing. She actually reached into Lisa’s pocket and pulled out some change. Then she turned to straight up house robbing.

Evie, holding up a penny: “Look what I found!”
Me: “Where did you get that from?”
Evie: “Uncle Ben’s room”

Unfortunately, the money is easy come, easy go. She was losing it all over the place. I guess I wouldn’t be too careful with it either if people were willing to just hand it over whenever I wanted some. Finally, Lisa bought her a “sock purse” which is just a sock with a clasp on top. Evie takes it everywhere.

Since she was so excited for it, we wanted her to buy some ice cream. However, most of the time Sara and I want ice cream too. So it didn’t seem fair to make her buy ice cream at a time when we would normally have bought it for her, and it didn’t seem fair for Sara and I to have to go without. Finally she got a chance at the camp store. She enjoyed the ice cream thoroughly, and, rather than putting an end to all the panhandling, it’s only encouraged her to try to weasel even more money out of people.

Ice cream costs about “7 monies” in case you were wondering.