The small child had observed how the bigger kids did it: in the morning, they put money into a brown paper bag, wrote something on the outside of the bag, and left it in a cardboard box by the door. In the afternoon, the bags returned containing snacks and were distributed. Popcorn, chocolate bars, fairy bread, all kinds of things. That morning she had found a coin on the ground; she wasn’t sure how much it was, but it was definitely money and she knew right away what she was going to do with it.

She discreetly slipped one of the empty bags off the pile, slipped her coin inside, and with a black marker scrawled something on the outside. Then she placed it in the box by the door and went back to her table.

When the bags returned in the afternoon, she waited expectantly for her name to be called, excited to find out what snack she was going to get. But as the box of bags emptied out and her name wasn’t called, she became concerned. And when the person with the box had finally handed out the last bag and departed, she realised she wasn’t getting her snack and began to cry. Everyone tried to find out what was wrong, but she couldn’t really explain it.

Meanwhile, in the school canteen, they puzzled over the mysterious bag with the unintelligible scribble on it, containing only a five cent coin.