“James, can you help me a little?” Mary called out to her son. The boy came trotting into the shop with the new sneakers his mother bought him. They squeaked loudly as they rubbed against the interior wooden floor. He was a boy of five years of age, with dark brown eyes and dirty-blonde hair.

Standing by his mother’s side, he asked her what she wanted him to do specifically. In return to the question, the mother kindly told him to make sure the back door was locked because someone may come in to steal the flowers. It was Valentines Day.

The boy trotted again, skipping along to the back door. He reached out to the door knob and tested it with his boyish strength, turning it as hard as he could like he wanted to be Superman. The knob wouldn’t bulge and so he turned around to face his mother and said one word, “locked.”

“Good,” the mother responded while picking up a large pot of soil and implanting a large flower.

“Now go ahead and play, James. Mommy’s busy right now,” she told the little as she straightened her back, obviously strained.

The boy ran out the door and started roaming around the parking lot. He gleefully skipped along the sidewalks and used the jump rope from Christmas to skip around the edges of the garage entrance.

The mother looked at her son through the window. Then, she turned away, about to start work. Her first customer came. She didn’t have to worry about her son. He never stepped off the family property.

Starting to feel uncomfortable with his jump roping, he started walking across the grass barefoot. His toes slided across the grass blades and the two, plant and flesh, cross over one another as if they were like key and lock. Grass and soft soil that were held together by the roots were felt entirely through the nerves of the little boy. He consistently stared at every aspect, both critter and insect, that ran through the grass, away from his presence. But, oh, one thing did catch his attention. While sliding his toes in between the blades of grass, James felt something hard, something cold like ice. Leaning down, he lifted the object from it's smooth sides. It was flat and it looked like metal. There was a person's face carved into it and when he turned it over, he saw an eagle, like those in a cowboy movie. His eyes seemed to glue to the object. The glittering of light against the hard surface brought joy to his eyes, like they did when he saw the sparkle in his mother's jewelry.

"Mama, mama!" he squeeled while he ran to her side. She had apparantly sold a lot of flowers to those wonderful husbands.

"Mm-hm?" Mary replied.

"What's this, mama?" he lifted the object for his mother to see.

Mary put it in her hands and looked at it and then at the boy, "This is called a 'quarter'."

"Really," the son's eyes sparkled with curiosity, "what is it used for?"

"Well, it is money and it is used to buy things. You see, it is usually the biggest coin you can use."

"Mmmm. Buying..."