Fairy Jar in Action

Today’s haul, found while picking up broken glass at the park

I was in my apartment alone one night when a strange man knocked on the door.

I answered it.

The strange man asked if we had change for a twenty.

At this point in my life, my husband and I live at a pier, a busy tourist area with a lot of foot traffic about ten feet from our front door. Anyone who shows up at our door could be, quite literally, anyone, from a transient to a yacht owner.

The smart thing for any true crime aficionado and student of the martial arts, especially a small female one, would be to ignore a knock at the door entirely. If you know me, text me or call out my name and prove it. If you don’t know me, vamoose.

I’m a trusting soul, however, and I answer my door.

The man introduces himself as my new neighbor and says he needs change because he’s trying to sell a piece of furniture to someone from craigslist.

A likely story!

Surely this dude is trying to convince me of something. He wants to find out if I’m by myself, he wants to know if he can trick me into showing him where I keep my money.

Or, he’s purely honest and he believes that neighbors can approach each other and ask for small favors.

I have the luxury of taking him at face value, for several reasons.

1. Our neighborhood is pretty safe, with the notable exception of doorstep package thieves.
2. We have a security guard on the night shift.
3. I know this security guard and I also know he’s within a few yards of our front door for most of his shift.
4. I also know that my husband has just stepped away to walk our dog and will be back literally any minute.
5. Two words: Krav Maga.

There’s also the fact that this guy fits. He’s from a different ethnic background than me, but he clearly looks and sounds like the software engineer he describes himself to be. He seems like the kind of guy we would hang out with.

This is the funny part. Everyone in this story definitely has twenty dollars, or, rather, the ten dollars needed to make change for the furniture sale.

We just don’t have it in cash.

What, like, bills? From the ATM? Do they still make those?

Where we live, we can go weeks at a time without handling paper currency. We can go days without touching a plastic card for credit or debit as well. Neither of us has had a paper checkbook for several years. Often we can pay for things with our phones, which for people who grew up with rotary dial phones still sounds utterly preposterous.

We have at least three separate caches of paper money, no, wait, four? Five? None of them have anything smaller than a...

WAIT!

The fairy jar!

I have a glass jar filled with money, all of which I have found on the ground since I moved to California. More accurately, I’ve found it in the street, since I don’t take coins if I find them indoors. It has to be “free range,” which my husband finds hilarious. If it’s indoors I put it in the next available tip jar.

Fifteen years of pennies and nickels tends to add up, especially if you walk a lot, especially if you have a dog who likes to stop and sniff every blessed thing.

Whenever the jar has gotten full, I’ve “bought” coins out of it with paper bills. When the wad of paper money gets too big, I’ve bought the small bills with bigger bills.

It turns out there’s nearly two hundred bucks in there now!

You’d think there’d be more, but we don’t really generate our own coins in change because we don’t really pay for things with cash.

Sure enough, there is easily change for a twenty in the fairy jar. Our new neighbor has been patiently hanging out on the porch while hubby and I scramble around looking for small bills. We make the exchange.

Now there’s a new twenty-dollar bill in the fairy jar where there used to be pennies.

More importantly, we’ve met a new neighbor who feels like a kindred spirit. We’ve done a tiny favor for him. Through this transaction, we’ve gotten to learn each other’s names and recognize each other’s faces. When we see each other around the complex, we’ll recognize each other as ‘NEIGHBOR’ rather than ‘INCIPIENT THREAT.’

With the pennies I’ve found on the street over the years, I’ve bought another layer of safety and connection in my neighborhood. I’ve added trust to the world, or my corner of it.

This is abundance. This is how it works and how it feels.

I open my door freely to a stranger because I feel like I can do that without real risk. I’m happy to meet someone new who might be a new friend, or colleague, or an eligible date for one of my single friends.

This person asks me for money (well, kinda) and I have it. I have this specific money because I find it all the time, on the ground, like a walnut or a crabapple or a blue feather.

I find money because I believe that I “have the time” to walk my dog, to walk on errands, to go out and hold hands with my husband while we watch the sun set. I have the identical twenty-four hours as everyone else who has ever lived, and I’m one of the few who feels like I “have the time.”

I put the $20 in the jar, in place of the smaller bills and coins that were there before, and it looks mighty fine.

I’m creating something out of nothing.

I’ve recognized subtle opportunities and taken advantage of them.

I’ve made my own fairy jar and I’ve filled it with coins that other people never bothered to pick up. I’ve made my own bit of whimsy and I’ve used it to work a bit of magic in real life.