Great things about being blind. Free money?

this happened to me last summer and a similar thing has also happened to a few of my friends who are blind and have guide dogs. I was very embarrassed about it at the time but it does give me good story fodder so...
It was very hot that day last summer and my former guide dog Gia and I were waiting for the bus. Gia was a beautiful golden retreiver with lots of fur. Lots and lots of fur! And she really hated the heat a great deal! Since my current guide dog Tulia loves lying in the sun, I suspect she won't mind the summer heat and humidity so much. I knew we had quite some time to wait for our bus. So, I took the dog water bowl out of my backpack and filled it with water for Gia. After she drank most of it, I realized that I didn't have anything to dry it with before putting it back in my backpack. So, since it was a cloth type dish, I stood there waving it and bouncing it around. Then, to my horror, someone came along and put money in the dog bowl. A toonie for us Canadians. A toonie is a two dollar coin. As soon as I heard the clink of it in the bowl, I cried, "No no no!" I paniced a little. I didn't want someone's money and the thought that anyone would think I was standing begging for money equally horrified me. But the person was long gone. Then, I heard a female voice with a very strong Scottish accent on my right. She said, "My dear. Just accept the money." She spoke so calmly and with a humourous giggle in her wonderfully accented voice that I stopped panicing. Pocketed the toonie and the dog bowl and had a great conversation with her while waiting for my bus.

Great things about being blind. My story of money identification

Yesterday I was asked a question about how I identify paper money. It brought back one of my all time favourite funny experiences. In some countries, bills are of different sizes. Not in Canada. We used to have no way of identifying paper money except for something called a bank note reader that you put your bill in and it read the denomination. Half the time though, (if the bill was wrinkled or something like that) it would say "Cannot read." I heard that more times than I would care to tell you. I always felt like saying, "Well I cannot read it either." I developed a system of folding bills in different ways. Putting them in different pockets of my wallet. I still use this system today. Over the past few years in Canada, they have placed tactile bars on the corners of bills. People think that they represent the numbers in braille, but they don't. What they have is one bar for five, 2 for 10, 3 for 20, etc. But still, I fold and place my bills as I always have. We used to have one and two dollar bills which have since been replaced by one and two dollar coins. The one dollar coin has a picture of a loon on it and it began to be called the loonie. When the two dollar coin came along, it became the toonie. I know you non-canadians, stop laughing at our odd names for money. Smile! This happened when we had one and two dollar bills as well as the others. This meant I had to be very innovative in my folding of money. One evening, we were coming through a very busy Canadian airport. After having gone through customs or security, I realized that I had left my purse somewhere. I went back to security and described my purse to them. They said they had found it and turned it into the office. They took me to the office. A very serious sounding woman was there. She asked what I had in the purse and I described what I had, my ID's and cards. She was satisfied that I was who I said I was. She handed back the purse. "Your wallet really was a mess," she said, "all that money folded up and in different places." She sounded quite disgusted by the whole situation. "I unfolded it all and straightened it all out for you," she said sounding very proud of herself. "And I put it all into one compartment." I very gently explained why I had my money in that state. Humbled, she identified my bills for me so that I could re-fold them and put them back where they belonged. She didn't sound nearly so haughty when I bid her farewell.