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Yep. I know. Misspelled "Canadian". Been in America entirely too long! :P

When my husband first came to Canada, he wanted to explore all that was Canadian. High on his list of things to do, was a stop at Tim Hortons and shopping at the Great Canadian Superstore.

(I know, I laughed too.)

He was quite taken by Tim Hortons and soon became addicted to Double Doubles and Dutchies like a good Canadian convert. Superstore, however, left him cold. He just could not get his mind around having to put a quarter in a cart or having to pay 3¢ for a grocery bag. It was the first time that he had ever encounter either of those supermarket phenomenons.

It has been a few years since then, and now the grocery store where we shop has implemented the same measures. It is a quarter to rent a cart and 5¢ for a paper bag - 10¢ for plastic. My husband was not amused with either.

We were taken off guard the first time that we went to the store and realized that we needed a quarter for the cart. Like most people in these modern times, we rely heavily on plastic. Since the creation of the debit card, we have not had a great deal of change clinking together in our pockets, and did not have any change on us this particular day. Not wanting to have to go all the way to the bank and then to a gas station to get change, we searched the car - my car - the Nukmobile.

I keep a stash of Canadian coins in my car. They have been there since the day that I crossed the border. They are my constant reminder of Canada. I know it is silly, but they make me happy just by being there in the console of the Nukmobile. My husband spotted the cache and went rifling through it to see if there was a quarter.

"Those are Canadian coins, you know." I said, hoping that he would move on to look elsewhere.

"Yeah, I know. But the cart doesn't," he said. "It is not like it will do a currency conversion and realize we shorted it."

I snickered, but the worry remained. I did not want to lose my last Canadian quarter.

"Maybe we should just go to the bank and pick up a couple of Diet Cokes? We will get some change if we do that," I feebly proposed.

"Nah, this will work." He sounded determined.

There I was left to either speak up about my silly coin obsession, or see my one remaining Canadian quarter - the vestige of my heritage - lost to the cart.

"What the heck," I thought to myself. "I can get the coin back when we return the cart."

Little did I know that my coin would be forever lost when the cashier switched carts on us as she rang up our groceries. She had an empty cart set up at the end of her line and filled that up with our bags rather than fill our own cart.

When we left with the foreign cart, the cashier took our cart and filled it up with the groceries of the people who had been behind us in line. As such, my Canadian quarter ended up in the hands of the people behind us. I wonder if they did the currency conversion and realized that they had been shorted?

*snicker*