Small Change
By: Glen Binger
Tags: Short Story, Fiction, New Jersey, Long Fiction, Realistic Fiction

.01

I was standing in line with Karly and Conor at the Rider University bookstore when it really kicked in. The flux of forever.

We were behind an overweight freshman wearing a Philadelphia Eagles jacket that was two sizes too small and looked as if it’d been in his possession since middle school. This was 2008 and I’d needed a kick. The Eagles had yet to win a Super Bowl. Something about that Starter jacket got me.

It was the first time I’d recognized the world’s constant state of change.

Not that I was eavesdropping, but I overheard his total came to $20.13; he was buying a discounted sweatshirt from the sale rack. Karly, Conor and I stood in line waiting to buy a few Sharpies for the non-proofread posters advertising Al Burian’s upcoming visit we had to hang up and correct around campus. Conor gestured at the jacket and brought our attention to him.

He had asked the cashier for an unusual request, cutting into the clerk’s awkward attempt at small talk. “Man, these sweatshirts are going pretty fast,” she said.

“Yeah. Listen,” he butted-in, running his hand through his oily blonde crew cut, “could you divide the change up into five dimes, six nickels and seven pennies?”

The young woman behind the counter looked confused at first, and then glanced over at us, silently screaming out for help. Karly had her back to the cashier so she stood as still as possible, with a giant grin plastered beneath her nose. Conor covered his mouth to keep from spewing saliva as he jogged out the door pretending his clam-shell cell phone was vibrating so he wouldn’t laugh in the kid’s face. I bit my lip, eyeing my empathy telepathically to the clerk.

The kid didn’t turn around, but I’m sure he knew that we were judging him. That’s the kind of thing you can just feel. Kira and I, my girlfriend at the time, had felt the same way upon transferring from TCNJ to Rider the semester prior; all of everyone stared at us if we were careless in choosing our clothing.

I felt bad as he waddled out the door. He was probably the kind of person who did all sorts of weird shit like that. Reminded me of my cousin, Chad, who used to sleep at other people’s parties.

As much as we laughed at the kid’s expense, I think he just didn’t care. I mean he didn’t give a fuck we were mocking him; he’d most likely heard it before.

Part of me admired that.

It made me contemplate the type of person I was: asshole wanna-be adult.

Here is this kid who is just off, doing his own thing, asking for dimes and nickels for god knows what reason, living life day-by-day, not caring what people say or think or feel. And there I was, sucking my own bloody bitten lip.

Karly paid for the Sharpies while exchanging comments about Mr. Change with the cashier so I strolled out the door to meet Conor. My mind was four steps ahead of myself. I want to be like that, I thought. I want to be the kind of person who doesn’t care what people think. Just living life in the present. Doing things on gut-instinct like Matt McConaughey.

We reached the dining hall as I made a decision. I’d been aching to do something out of the ordinary for so long and this insignificant incident at the bookstore finally erased the path beneath my stubborn, corporated feet.

.02

Let me take a step back.

For the past week in my Creative Writing class with Dr. Hess, we’d been reading Al Burian’s Natural Disaster. It’s a somewhat gloomy book but it is bursting with deadpan creativity and intellectual humor. It’s the kind of read I opened when I couldn’t sleep. The kind you could open up in front of the television without being distracted or depressed. Each week we were assigned a section to finish before the following class.

Anyway, after reading the first half or so, my mind became the equivalent of an existential volcano: spewing dynamically voided thoughts and ideas in an upright discharge fashion. Question after question, epiphany after epiphany. All the nothingness.

On Thursday that week, the class sat outside on the steps next to the building our class was supposed to be in. It was just above 60 degrees (probably 65 in the sunlight) and quite obvious that we were all yearning for the upcoming warm weather, including Dr. Hess. We discussed the first four sections, Socratic-circle style, and I became aware of this pang in my chest; this growing desire to wander. A need to just get up and go somewhere else. Anywhere. Everywhere. Kerouac style. Winter was coming to a close, so what better time to make such a decision?

Class ended and my ribcage had been peeled apart. The sun went away and the clouds came out. All I needed was my car keys.

Of course, in true Jersey fashion, my idea of a spur-of-the-moment trip amounted to nothing more than a trip to some lame coffee shop that I’d never been to or heard of, for that matter. I’d been spoiled with my late-night excursions to the ocean with Kira.

Small World Coffee is located in Princeton, which was just a few miles down the road from Rider’s campus. There are two of them now, but back then it was just one.

We’d seen open-mic flyers floating around campus before, so it must’ve been incepted prior to my epiphany. But I also heard it was a relatively decent cup of coffee, so I decided I was going to nerd-out and go to the coffee shop with a notebook. I tried to imagine myself sitting in the corner with an empty cup; writing furiously, trying to put stuff together for a potential collection like a reincarnated Ginsberg or Bukowski.

Unfortunately, before I could spill myself onto paper, I remembered we had to fix that stack of posters for Burian’s visit. The person who drew them up, Sam, put the wrong date and misspelled the building the reading was in. And none of the lazy freshmen editors bothered to check.

Okay, no problem, I thought. The adventure can resolve my mid-mid-life crisis after we refurbish the posters.

.03

Out of the three of us, not one had a single Sharpie marker. (Which I thought was strange, us all being in Liberal Arts.) So after a nippy walk to the bookstore under a few sheets of rain, we bought some markers.

“I can’t believe none of us had a Sharpie,” Conor would say.

“Me neither,” Karly and I agree.

We made sure to pick the fat black ones, mostly to acknowledge evidence of our mistakes. Then while waiting in line we came across Mr. Change.

“Could you divide the change up into five dimes, six nickels and seven pennies?” he hastily asked.

I should have mentioned before how I wanted to tap the kid on the shoulder and ask him why. Or how he could live day-in and day-out as if he were some sort of inverted vending machine. Companies like OmniCloud must’ve hated people like him — the ones who think for themselves and don’t give a fuck. Hell, he probably majored in Business just to intern with a tech giant like them. That way he could request his paycheck severed into multiple 401(k)s and investment opportunities.

I imagined myself grabbing the collar of his green nylon Eagles jacket.

“Hey. Kid. Yeah, so what’s the deal? Why do you care what type of change she hands back?” I would ask, expecting some sort of existential response to fill my void that grew to the size of an earthquake since class. He would pause, looking distraught and say, “… I need some small change for the vending machine?” “Oh,” I would say disappointedly. “Okay.”

I was unexpectedly shattered back to reality via the raspberries being blown from Conor’s lips as he stepped outside the bookstore’s entrance, pretending to answer a call. I looked at Karly, whose back was to Mr. Change and had that growing smirk across her strawberry-blonde face.

After a few paces in reverse, I did an about-face to pretend as if I were studying the prices of the basketball jerseys before leaving. I felt laughing from the lower section of my stomach-lining bubble up through my esophagus. Couldn’t even control it.

The kid took the money and paced out the door casually.

“May I help you, miss?” the young woman behind the counter asked Karly’s back.

“Oh. Yes, sorry. Just these.” She turned and handed the woman the markers. “Rough day, huh?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe.”

They shared a laugh at the expense of Mr. Change as I stepped out the door to catch up to Conor who was just outside the doorway. I couldn’t help but keep thinking about how much I desired to be like that kid and not give a shit about what people thought of me. I mean, that is partially the reason why I never do impulsive things. Up until this moment, the craziest unplanned thing I have ever accomplished was drive home for the night without telling my parents I was coming home. Ooooooo. Alex you’re so crazy. I know, I know. Fuck that. I wanted to be able to do what I want, when I want, without thinking twice about it.

.04

The rain had turned to a misty haze coating the air so we paced our short walk to the dining hall, which is where we would be correcting the flyers. After grabbing a cup of shitty coffee to arouse my nerves, the three of us sat down in the corner to figure out how we would arrange the modifications.

“So, how should we do this?” Karly asked.

“Man, fuck Sam. We wouldn’t be doing this if he just proofread,” Conor said.

I bit the inside of my cheek gently and nodded my head in agreement. Karly laughed.

“Probably sneezed and missed it,” I laughed.

He continued; “Well, we could just cross them out and write the correct thing and then write ‘thanks a lot, Sam’ next to it.”

The three of us laughed as Karly peeled the fresh markers from their packaging. She handed one to Conor and took one herself.

“Hmmm. Okay,” I mumbled, still not really sure what to do.

They didn’t respond.

As they split the stack of posters and began fixing them, I dazed off into existential land again. The ceiling was leaking into a bucket on the next table over; I wished I was the bucket. Then I’d at least feel like the routine was changed up every once in a while. On rainy days I would catch leaking water from the poorly constructed ceiling, on snowy days I could be used as a cleaner for the mop that picked up the loose bits of mud and salt near the entrance. And on normal days I would be used as a rag bucket, rinsing off the bits of food stuck to the towels that employees used to clean the tables with.

But no. I was a person; a college student who, day-in and day-out, went to class studying to become a young professional. My writing concentration meant nothing and I couldn’t jump the fence that leads to a less channeled path. Hell — I’d probably end up at OmniCloud too, wearing ties and slacks from 9 to 5 and acute sadness until bedtime.

It’s not even like I’m an unhappy person. I love life. I am very happy. Most of the time you’ll find me smiling like a fool. It’s no mask. Part of me just wanted to experience more of what life had to offer. (At least in that point of my timeline.) I wanted to be able to say, “I did that” to my kids.

As I finished my paper-cup coffee, Conor clicked the cap of his marker shut. They had finished the stack of posters and the whole time I had been lost in thought.

“Ok, well that’s that,” Conor said as he clapped the pretend dust off his hands. “Wanna go hang them up, now?”

“Sure,” Karly said packing the posters into her backpack.

“Ummm, sorry guys. I got a bunch of work to do,” I lied, “but if you give me some I’ll hang them up tomorrow. I mean he’s not gonna be here ’til Tuesday. It’s only Thursday.”

“That works,” Conor agreed.

We gathered our things and walked out the door. I headed back to my room as Karly and Conor headed towards the academic buildings in the other direction.

“Later, guys,” I said.

Again, they didn’t respond. They were already deep into conversation. I sighed.

.05

When I got back to my room I sat down at my desk, accumulating a pen and notebook for my trip to the Small World Coffee. It was musky in my room, like a pile of sweaty clothes balled up in the corner for a couple of weeks. Body odor filled every square inch of that twelve-by-twelve dorm room. To be straightforward, it smelled like ass. It was absolutely repulsive and hindered my adventure progress. So I took two bottles of air freshener and coated every centimeter of the room with the scent of ‘fresh rain’ mixed with ‘summer breeze.’ But my efforts were futile. The aromas mixed into a ‘Fresh Summer Sweaty Ass.’ It was no use. My roommate had lower living standards than I did.

I picked up the television remote, wiped off the thin layer of orange Cheetos-grease coating it like a sleeve, and laid down on my bed thinking about how unkempt my roommate was. I flipped on MTV in hope of a Rob and Big marathon (one of my favorite TV shows at the time) but again, my efforts were unsuccessful. I turned to the Discovery Channel. Some program on how to survive in the wild was on and looked somewhat interesting so I tossed the remote onto the copy machine that we had lying in the middle of our floor. My roommate used it to print zines.

I immediately regretted that decision because the program grew dull and tedious. My eyelids gained thirty pounds and I couldn’t keep them open. So of course I fell asleep only to awake a few hours later in the dark with nothing but the flickering lights of Dirty Jobs.

The LED lights of my alarm clock read 8:46. In reality that meant it was 8:43 because I always advanced that clock ahead three minutes to avoid being late. However, that never worked because I always found myself subtracting three from the time it read. Alas, it was dark and raining outside and I still have yet to ‘do something with my life.’

But at least Kira was done baby sitting by now and could come with me for the adventure.

I got up, turned the lights on and changed out of my wet clothes. It’d gotten colder so I threw on one of my TCNJ sweatshirts as I went to walk out the door. My phone started vibrating and I immediately knew it was her.

“Hey,” I answered as I flipped it open.

“Hey,” she said. “Where have you been? I’ve been calling you for like a half hour.”

“Oh, sorry bout that. I fell asleep after class.” I laughed. “How was babysitting?”

“It was fine… I hate those kids. They are so fuckin’ rude! They seriously make me not want to have children.”

“Yeah, they do sound like little brats.” I could hear the anger intensifying in her voice so I decided to change subjects as quickly as I could. “So hey, wanna go on an adventure with me?”

She sighed, realizing that I changed subjects on purpose and decided to just float on with the conversation. “Sure.”

“Ok cool, I’m heading over to your room now, then we’ll go from there.”

“Where are we going?”

“Grab a notebook.”

“Okay… but where are we going?

By now she had caught on to my scheme and realized that it wasn’t really an adventure. So I bit my tongue and admitted the facts. “Well, we’re just gonna go to Small World Coffee and do some writing in the lounge. I’ve got some new zine ideas. Sound good?”

“Alright,” she laughed. “Nice adventure though, Alex. Tomorrow maybe we can drive home! That’s a road trip to remember right there.”

I drooped, finally allowing my poor attempt at a spur-of-the-moment trip to be crushed. “Yeah, I know. It’s lame. But fuck it. It’s something to do until the party tonight.”

She heard me smile and responded with a certain understanding that only she has; “Alright, babe. I’ve been wanting to get some tea from there anyway, I haven’t been there since freshman year at TCNJ.”

“Okay, cool. I’ll drive, I’m outside your building.”

.06

Kira was also part of the Liberal Arts department at Rider. She lived in the same town as me back at home and she was into pretty much everything that I was. As I mentioned, the only other spontaneous adventure we’d recently been on was a forty-five minute drive home to the ocean. So she was in the same audacious mood that I was.

The only problem was that we never came up with any good ideas. In fact, I think the only reason we were trying so hard to come up with ideas lately was because of Burian’s visit to campus. Kira and I really wanted to live the easy life that he supposedly lived. Dr. Hess had told us he lived on couches and survived on the infinitesimal royalties from his band and his books. (We’d watched a few videos of his band, Milemarker, on the projector in preparation for his visit. Apparently, he also gave-away author copies at his shows.)

It’s kind of stupid, but I guess my depression developed because this. I felt like I haven’t been doing anything with the two decades of my life so far. And somehow, stupidly admiring someone who was able to break free of the economic chains around him inspired me. It helped me see life in smaller pieces.

We parked on a side street about four blocks away from Nassau Street so we wouldn’t have to pay to park. Princeton had this pretentious notion that they can charge people to park like they were some sort of big city. Whatever. It was colder than I expected so I made Kira speed walk to keep up with me.

“Man, fuck Princeton and their parking meters,” I said.

“Alex. Relax. We’re a few blocks away.”

“I know, I’m just stressin’.”

“Why? You have nothing to worry about. It’s Thursday night. Burian comes next week. And in a few weeks we’ll be going to Vermont for some shredding!”

She was smiling, trying to show off her cute-face. I’m sure she saw that I was having a minor meltdown. I mean, she was obviously trying to calm me down. But she was right. Burian did come next week, it was Thursday night and there would be a party for us to drink some stress away. Plus, we were going snowboarding in Vermont for spring break in a few weeks. I guess she had a point.

“Yeah, you’re right. I’m just having one of those moments.”

She gave me a hug from my side as we reached the cafe, “It’s alright. We all do.”

I opened the door and motioned for Kira to walk in. We shuffled to the counter and stood for a moment, still deciding on what to order.

“Can I help you,” asked the tall scruffy guy from behind the counter.

“Yeah, I’ll get an iced green tea,” said Kira. “Do you sell full-bags of tea?”

He shook his head no and looked at me.

“And can I just get a cup of coffee?” I asked.

“Sure,” the tall guy said, “Is that it?”

“Yep,” I answered.

“Okay, that comes tooooo… $7.31.”

I handed the guy a ten and he gave me the change. The other barista working placed the green tea and coffee on the counter in front of me.

“Ki, can you grab those?” I asked as I stuffed the bills into my wallet.

.07

We walked back to the table in the corner and Kira placed the drinks down. I flopped the change onto the area of tabletop right in front of my seat. She sat down and immediately ripped out her notebook and started writing a poem, the pen’s ink bleeding and scabbing at the paper fiber. There were no bluetooth cell-phone keyboards back then. At least, ones that a broke-ass college student could afford. You were lucky if you had a decent enough laptop.

I looked around the café trying to find some sort of inspiration. It must have been a good five minutes before anything was said between the two of us. I had already gotten up to put a bit of milk in my coffee to cool it down. I don’t think she even noticed because when I sat down she didn’t even look up.

As I explored the room from my seat I caught eyes with the girl behind the counter and felt bad because I’m pretty sure she was checking me out. She had this sly smirk on her face and kept ignoring the customers trying to interact with her. Kira snapped me out of the staring contest because I saw her look up out of the corner of my eye.

“What are you doing?” She asked.

“Uh…” I paused trying to think of the right answer because I’m quite positive she had just caught me staring at the girl behind the counter.

“Why aren’t you writing?”

At first I was befuddled because I was sure she’d caught me, but then I quickly responded realizing she hadn’t; “I can’t think of anything yet.”

“Oh, okay,” she paused looking down at my side of the table. “Soooo… why are you playing with the change?”

I looked down and to my surprise I found myself organizing the change on the table into quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies. Total subconscious.

“Oh wow. I didn’t even notice.” I chuckled. “No reason, just trying to think, I guess.”

“Alrighty then,” she said, digging back into her notebook.

I slid the coins off the side of the table into my palm and shoved it in my pocket. This was my life and I was in control. Twenty years old, there I was sitting in a coffee shop when I realized that a mid-mid-life crisis was just another part of being alive. I’m still unsure if it was Burian’s book or the bookstore, but I like to believe it’s the latter.

I didn’t need to go on a spontaneous road trip. I didn’t need to live life in the constant state of carpe diem. I just needed to find something that would simply make life change. Even if it were the slightest bit; like finding inspiration to alter my dejected self in some weird Philadelphia Eagles fan that asked for small change.