USA. A grocery register. The cashier asked if I wanted cash back, and I said no, because I feared a trap. Then a machine outside charged me three dollars and fifty cents for the same service, and I have not forgiven myself. Let me explain the moment. I paid with a card. The screen asked: CASH BACK? $20 — $40 — $60. A store. Offering to hand me money. At the end of a transaction in which I gave THEM money. "I have not earned this," I said. "It comes out of your account, sir." "But why would a store perform the duty of a bank?" "...so you don't have to go to one?" I declined. I am of a careful house. Unearned coin arrives with strings, and I could not see the strings, which means the strings are excellent. Then I needed cash that same evening. I found a machine in a gas station. The machine agreed to give me my own money for a fee of three dollars and fifty cents. I stood before it a long time. The cashier would have done it for nothing. With a smile. While bagging my eggs. In this country, the merchant is also the money-changer, and the money-changer is free, and I had bowed politely to the free one and paid tribute to a humming box in a corner that smelled of taquitos. In my land, changing money once required a licensed house, a seal, and a ledger kept for the magistrate. Here it requires a teenager named Kaylee saying "twenty okay?" A merchant who hands you coin has not lost his mind. He has saved you a journey. I take twenty dollars cash back every visit now, whether I need it or not. Kaylee no longer asks. She simply holds up the bill. "Twenty for the road," she says. For the road. I bow exactly as much as a grocery store can absorb, and I go.