Wirt wrote :

> In 1964, when I was 18 and on Guam as a junior scientist,
> tracking geodetic
> satellites for the good of all humanity, I went to the bank
> at Anderson AFB and
> asked the teller to change my $100 bill for four $25 bills.
> She just looked
> at me and laughed.
>
> Up to that point, I had never paid much attention to what
> denominations money
> came in and I simply extrapolated that if quarters existed,
> $25 bills would
> too. After all, who makes a twenty cent piece?
>
> Later, in 1972, when I was 26 and a slightly older junior
> scientist, now
> doing entomology for the good of all humanity, I tried to
> make a semi-long
> distance phone call in New Zealand, but things didn't go
> well. The phone ate my
> money, so I called the operator. He asked me what coins I put
> into the phone. I
> said a nickle and a dime. He just laughed and said, "You're
> American, aren't
> you?" They don't seem to call 5 and 10 cent pieces in New
> Zealand nickles and
> dimes.
>
> I no longer give anyone money without a bit of lingering fear of being
> laughed at.
>
> Wirt Atmar

I got quite similar experiences, just the other way round.

In 1971, at age 11, I was getting my first English lessons in junior high. I
remember that lesson where we were supposed to learn about British currency
at that time. The pound was divided in 20 shillings, each shilling worth 12
pence (abbreviated d, from the latin word denarius, or the smallest amount
of money you can get, not p for pence), not pennies, pence. Some "salaries"
(sorry, the exact term now escapes me) were denominated in guineas, each
guinea worth 21 shillings (IIRC). Useless to say, I've never seen any coin
or note denominated in guineas. The teacher made it easy by sorting out all
the different coins into copper coins, brass coins and who knows what else.
The next summer, '72, I had  my first trip to Britain. By that time, they
had switched to a system with a pound divided into 100 new pence (still no
pennies, abbreviated p for pence), which made all my previous painstaking
education irrelevant.At the time, pounds were really banknotes. Now (and for
a number of years) the British have 1? (pound sign) coins.

In 1979, I had my first trip to the US. I remember reading in a tourist
guide that banknotes were all the same size and color, a totally
unimaginable concept here in Europe, and that, for that very reason, we had
to be quite careful about which note we attempted to use. Most of the money
we cashed in at banks were twenties, and to this day I still have no clue
why the twenty is so widespread, as compared to other denominations, like
the one-hundred dollar note. What sense does it make to cash in $1,000 in
twenties ? Oh, well, I guess there must be a reason ....

In the same tourist guide, I also had a chart that explained the
correspondence between the face value of coins and their nickname, like :

1 cent --> penny
5 cents --> nickel
10 cents --> dime (this one easy, from its latin root)
25 cents --> quarter (the easiest of all, for obvious reasons)

I had to explain my mom that, yes, the Americans were also using pennies
(not pence !!!!!), though 2 centuries before they were not exactly on
friendly terms with Her Majesty's soldiers, and that she should never, ever,
call these coins "pence". Pennies were OK, though, and they were exactly one
cent in value, so why not call them cents ? Er ... mom ... wanna make
yourself understood ? They're pennies, and that's it. We quickly got used to
carrying a whole bunch of quarters with us. I also tried to explain my mom
that, when paying to watch a football game (not soccer, "real" football), I
would always get a quarter back, but she never quite fully got that one.

Of course, we also expected the US at the time (late-70s) to be much more
advanced in terms of credit card usage than France was, but this was hardly
the case. We even found a gas station in some remote place somewhere between
Kentucky and West Virginia (IIRC), where the clerk would not accept travelle
r's checks (he had obviously never seen any before), would not accept my
dad's credit card (because it was written "Visa" on it, and not
Master-something), and forced us to go to the local bank to get some hard
cash. Well, not that "hard", after all, it was ... guess what ... twenties !
I still remember the stunned face of the clerk, trying to figure out how
these aliens from a faraway planet were trying to screw him with monopoly
money or something. Real American Express Traveller's checks, I swear they
were ...

What I also noticed at the time is that US banknotes had the faces of former
Presidents. In France, this has never been the case. French Franc banknotes
had the faces of less-than-controversial individuals, like scientists (Louis
Pasteur), writers (Victor Hugo) or artists (Quentin de la Tour).

Bottom line : what's daily life for you in the US is supposed to be amusing
for us, visitors. The opposite may well be true.

Christian "still watching the US and its inhabitants with a lot of
affection"

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