Can I feel your money?
I’ve traveled to this part of the Pacific before. I knew the day would come. You’re standing in queue for your fish ‘n chips, the young person behind the counter takes your order, notices your accent and can see a number of strange cards emerge from your wallet. As you pull out your cash, stuck in between are a couple of bizarre-looking pieces of green-ish cotton. You don’t process their existence as anything abnormal; after all, you might want to grab a quick bite on your way through LAX, and American currency usually does the trick better than Kiwi dollars.
But to the young person, this is a fascinating sight. He’s only seen them on television before. He’s heard of this iconic Greenback, and his friends from school who have taken holiday to the States have gotten to touch its strange surface. Who would dream of making cotton paper?
For Kiwis and Aussies, you need to know that currency is not paper. It is a polymer plastic banknote, complete with the ability to see through it at parts for counterfeit protection purposes. For many young people, this is the only currency they have ever really used in exchange, having been introduced in 1999.
“Oh, it’s not like paper, really,” this young man said after I gave him a single to try out. ”But you can rip it, right?”
That’s one of the fascinating things about the polymer notes. They don’t tear easily, but if they do they are likely to break in two pieces and you will need to exchange them for a whole. They don’t disintegrate in the wash, they are significantly more difficult to counterfeit (and thus easier to observe improper notes), are more vivid in printing and color, last up to four times as long as paper-printed notes, and generally more pleasing all around.
(Interruption: Canada will be introducing polymer banknotes in 2011. Mexico has printed some peso denominations on polymer. They are present in North America, though not in its most populous constituent, and I would suspect aren’t coming to the U.S. soon having just redesigned most of our currency in the past decade.)
So if you travel in this part of the world as an American, carry a couple bucks with you. Not only will it be puzzling to others in the world to know that a single dollar is printed rather than coined, but the young people will be fascinated by this antiquated way of living. Let them feel your money, and don’t be offended. It’s another way to open two peoples’ eyes to the wonders of cross-cultural travel.
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Daniel Ross-Jones serves as Minister for Youth & Young Adults at First Congregational Church of Palo Alto, United Church of Christ. Living in the San Francisco Bay Area for a time still measured in months, he is frequently getting lost and discovering treasures of a landscape very different from his Upper Midwestern roots. Green Jello Hotdish is a blog exploring the intersections of his days. 
