Taking currency at face value

As happy as I am for Harriet Tubman and her descendants, I’d be happier for Kat Mama had she been deemed worthy of having her face printed on a currency note — preferably the two-dollar bill.

Kat Mama is no one of national significance. She also doesn’t raise any yips of recognition statewide or even within the county. In fact she is probably only vaguely recognizable to a handful of people in my neighborhood. Put her in a lineup of cat ladies and she’d be as distinguishable as a litter of black kittens in a dark closet.

Nevertheless, the woman who pushes a live cat in a baby stroller along broken sidewalks and across busy streets without saying a word or making eye contact  brings me the sort of delight I experience when coming across a two-dollar bill. There is beauty in an unusual oddity having expressed real value.

Someone else I would not mind seeing on some form of currency would be Lady Chatsalot, my neighbor who, while inoffensive,  talks incessantly and prompts me to hide when I see her in the supermarket. Like the one-cent piece, it’s not that I mind having it around it’s just that its presence can be inconsequential and obliquely useful.

Understanding, however, that the Department of the Treasury  prefers to use historically significant figures on their money, I’d offer that its policy be amended to consider those who are living in addition to the ones who are dead. That way we might see the face of Bruce Springsteen — an icon of rock and roll and the middle class — on the 10-dollar bill.

Springsteen, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Dr. Dre, Run DMC, Garth Brooks and Madonna, for example, have all shaped this country’s culture and identity just as much as, say, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Amazon honcho Jeff Bezos, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and Internet “father” Leonard Kleinrock.

The list of individuals who merit some sort of homage on American currency is long and rather than wait for decades to debate and assign someone to a coin or a bill, the treasury could roll out new versions of money every couple of years, creating virtual collector’s items and prompting people to save and trade their hard-earned dollars, thereby bolstering the economy. And since we, as a nation, are able to vote overnight and choose an American Idol, there’s no reason we the people can’t choose between Neil Armstrong or Wynton Marsalis to be the face of the 2017-2019 five-dollar bill.

But I still prefer my original idea of regular folks — as odd as we may be — having our mugs plastered across one-, five-, 10- and 20-dollar bills. We work hard for our money and we spend it quickly, usually paying bills and taxes. It would be nice if there were a way we could cling to our money and demonstrate our worth, even if it was just at face value.