A wallet full of two-dollar bills is like carrying around a wallet of joy. People get excited with unexpected encounters of two-dollar bills, and for some people it’s just the regular course. The two-dollar adventure unfolds many personality traits.
Getting them at the bank
First I walk into my bank and deposit a check like normal. After taking care of official adult business, the cashier asks the typical “is there anything else I can do for you today, Mr. Maldre?” For all those times I’ve been asked that question, I finally have a “yes” reply, and this time the request is a fun one!
“Actually, I would like to take all the money in my wallet,” as I pause while I notice that the cashier is starting to smile now, “and convert it it all into two-dollar bills.
She doesn’t even flinch! “Ok. You have 95 dollars here.” She takes my money, and walks into the back room, like this a normal occurance.
She’s disappeared into the back room for a few minutes while I imagine the conversation happening between bankers in the secret room. “We just don’t carry that many two-dollar bills! What kind of request is this? Nobody asks for these except for grandmas wanting only a few for their grandkids!”
After a few minutes she finally comes out with a big fat wad of two-dollar bills. First she counts them to herself, and then she says, “let me double-check” as she goes to the bill counter and it rapidly counts through the bills. I can now tell that she is having fun with this, because she is taking extra care with my request by double-counting.
She comes up to me and starts the routine by placing each bill on the counter one-by-one while she continues to count through them. Two. Four. Six. Eight. Ten. Twelve…. Thirty-four…. Thirty-six… She does get a bit slower when she reaches the seventies. I guess the odd number paired with counting evens can be confusing.
I am giggling the entire time she is counting–and several times I wished I had my video camera, each time realizing, duh, this is a bank. You can’t just videotape in here. But oh, this was too classic.
Ninety. Ninety-two. Ninety-four. and one. for Ninety-five. She hands me the big wad of two-dollar bills. I jam them into my naked wallet. As I try to fold the wallet in half, it’s now a George Caztanza-style wallet. So fat and bulging, it’s absolutely ridicululous trying to carry this in my back pocket. But I do so anyways for the kicks of it.
Spending my first two-dollar bill
First place to spend the two-dollar bill? Sportmart. To get my baseball to have everyone I know sign. And wouldn’t you know it? They have baseballs there for two bucks. Perfect!
The cashier rang up my ball, and I go into my wallet and pull out a crisp two-dollar bill. The cashier was astonished, “Are you sure you want to spend this?” I showed him the inside of my wallet. “Look inside, I just went to the bank and exchanged out ALL my money for two-dollar bills. I certainly have plenty.” This cashier dude was so excited to have a two-dollar bill, he asked his boss (who was standing right there) if he could exhange it out with his own money (his boss did). Then the other three cashiers were all curious and came over to see what was happening. They all found it very amusing and we swapped two-dollar bill stories.
Spending 2 two-dollar bills at McDonalds
Having been very pleased with this reaction, I headed over to McDonalds with the plan of spending TWO, yes TWO, two-dollar bills. Surely I would get TWICE the excitement. I hand the cashier the two two-dollar bills. And she doesn’t flinch. I’m thinking, “what! i just handed you TWO two-dollar bills. I’m SURE this has never happened to you before.” Ah well.
Rejection at Arby’s
Recently I handed the cashier at Arby’s THREE two-dollar bills. And she asked the other cashier, “do we take these?” WHAT!? DO YOU TAKE TWO-DOLLAR BILLS!? HOW CAN YOU NOT?! That was just weird, i’m sorry. Weird.
Join in
I highly highly (yes, that’s a double recommendation) anyone to exchange all your money in your wallet for two-dollar bills. It’s like carrying a walletful of joy ready to unfold adventures where you’ll get your two-cent’s worth.
awesome story. You could make an entire blog about your two dollar bill stories. Just make sure your wallet is always full of Jeffersons. A similiar experience might be had with dollar coins. Though people are more familiar with 2 dollar bills. Too many people don’t know about the dollar coins.
And then you could have people submit their own 2 dollar bill stories and you could publish them on your 2 dollar bill blog.
My father collected two dollar bills for a while. He even had an old one with some red ink on it as opposed to all green. You must have gotten a younger teller at the bank, as most experienced tellers probably wouldn’t be fazed by your request. We get all kinds of strange requests here at banks.
Great post Spudart! Actually I wonder if you would get twice the excitement if you combo the $2 bills with the new dollar coin for your odd numbered transactions. We received 30 George Washington dollar coins for my wife’s 30th birthday. As unlikelymoose pointed out most people simply don’t know about them. When I try to pay with them I need to tell people that they are worth $1. They are sooo gold, shiny and irresistible!!! that I have a hard time handing them over.
Wonderful. My co-worker and I spent far too long reading this, laughing, and coming up with similar schemes. We were thinking he might try carrying around a velvet sack of $1 coins, sort of pirate-style.
Kelly, a velvet sack of $1 coins would be remarrrrrrrrrrrkable! But fo’ real. That would be so cool to whip out a velvet sack (sack is such a funny word, is it not?) and then rummage your hand into it grabbing several golden coins to pay the cashier. When you get change back, I would advise not putting into your sack, because then your sack would just be a mere coin sack, and not a golden dollar sack. I’m trying to see how many times I can say sack.
I’m totally going to do this! And BTW, I think you’re more E than you realise even if you claim I. :oP
I claim “I” as in the Extroverted versus Introverted in the Meyer-Briggs personality test, because I find spending time with other people to take a lot of energy. After hanging out with someone, I need lots of time to relax. I dunno. Just how i’m wired. Introverts are like that. Whereas extroverts find spending time with people to increase their level of energy afterwards. But, thanks for the insight. 🙂
I always thought the 2 dollar bills I have saved over the years were something very special and do’t ever plan to spend them. Let me know if I am wrong. I am 75 and have bills over 50 years old.
Helen, I think your 50-year-old two-dollar bills are VERY special! Wow. All the bills I got from the bank were from 2003. There were none older than that. So 50-year-old bills are very special. 🙂