The Price of Happiness? Two Dollars

My friend Emma loves a budget. Being broke, as she was in her student days, or having a mortgage, as she is now, is not a threat to her lifestyle but a challenge to maintain it that she embraces. It's not that she's cheap. It's more that she's, as my parents generation would categorise it, thrifty.

Emma has a child too now, so when a night on the town threatened a few weeks back it was an opportunity too good to miss. So it was off to raid the piggy bank for Emma, who much to her pleasure discovered she was the proud owner of a handful of coins coming to the grand total of two dollars.

The challenge was how to get the maximum happiness from the two dollars. Here's what a bunch of us came up with. Your challenge is to add to the list:

• Chopsticks: Admittedly this was thanks to our good friend google. As far as I'm concerned $2 for chopsticks is a rip off when you can get a free spork from Kentucky Fried Chicken.
• A helium filled balloon: Nothing brings more spontaneous happiness and joy than sounding like a castrate soprano for 3 minutes.
• A night's accomoodation in a cheap backpackers in Thailand
• A three course meal in Zimbabwe or any other country where there is massive depreciation of the currency. Oh how I reminisce about the end of communism in Eastern Europe, and the demise of the Khmer Rouge.
• A middy of beer during happy hour - so it must be happy!
• Wizz Fizz: Certainly it did the job when I was a kid but I need stronger mind altering drugs these days
• Get a poor guy to do something funny: though that could get kind of depressing after a while
• Donate to charity: Nah - just kidding. We're talking our own happiness - not some kid in Africa.

I've also had a number of asian women offer to love me long time for $2. But we're talking happiness, not love!

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