Coin the Chipmunk Counts It Back

On Sunny Lane there is a little lemonade stand, and behind the coin box sits Coin, a bright-cheeked chipmunk with round, puffy cheeks and quick, careful paws. Her stripy tail curls up behind her like a question mark, and her apron has one deep pocket that goes clink when she walks. Coin’s job is the trickiest one at the stand: when a customer pays too much, she has to give back exactly the right change.

A cup of lemonade costs 60 cents. One warm afternoon a customer put down a whole shiny dollar — 100 cents — and waited. The new helper at the stand froze. “A dollar is more than sixty… I don’t know how much to give back,” he whispered, and his ears went pink.

Coin did not laugh, and she did not rush. She patted the coin box and smiled. “You don’t have to take away the big scary way,” she said softly. “We just count UP. Start at what it cost, and climb to what they gave us.” Her cheeks puffed happy, the way they always did when a hard number was about to turn easy.

So she counted up, out loud, one small hop at a time. “Sixty…” she set down a nickel, “…sixty-five.” Then a dime, “…seventy-five.” Another quarter, “one dollar.” She looked up. “Three little coins. That’s the change — a nickel, a dime, and a quarter. Forty cents.” The climb from 60 to 100 was the change, hiding in plain sight.

Say it with Coin, out loud: “Count up from the cost — then no change is lost.”

The helper tried the very next customer himself. He started at the cost and climbed, coin by coin, calm as Coin. When he handed back the change and the customer said “thank you, exactly right,” his ears went from pink to proud. Coin bumped his shoulder with her puffy cheek. “See? You didn’t need to be fast. You needed to go up.”

That is Coin’s move, and it works every time. When a customer pays too much, don’t panic and don’t guess. Put your paw on the cost, and count UP to the money in your hand. Every little coin you add along the way — that is the change, and not one cent gets lost.