Have you ever watched a coin circle down one of those things? It goes around and around in smaller and smaller circles until finally it falls into the hole at the bottom. They are usually for donations or something, and once it falls through the coin sized hole you are never getting it back. If the hole was any bigger people would just steal their donations back. I understand why the hole is the size that it is.
Anyway, there used to be one at the Children's Museum. My mom would give my brother and I what limited coinage she had and we would be transfixed. Mesmerized. Slowly, deliberately placing one coin at a time, letting it go, and giving our full attention from the release all the way until we heard the faint *clink* of it hitting the other coins left by those who came before us.
When we got down to the last coin we would release it like all the others, watching it circle smaller and smaller and right before it reached the hole I would hoist myself up on the side of the thing and slap my hand down, trapping the last coin between my palm and the cool surface below.
And I would set it off again, circling and circling. And I would stop it again and set it off again and again and again just for the pleasure of watching it. I would do this until I was dragged along to the next exhibit or until, being too slow or too clumsy, I accidentally let the coin disappear forever into the coin sized hole.
I sometimes think that I am the coin. Spiraling again and again only to catch myself at the last second.
AMV