All My Gettings

I was on the phone yesterday with my mother and I mentioned needing to call someone in the States. She asked if I had enough time left on my calling card and I replied, "yeah, it's got about 85 minutes." She then, without a hint of irony, asked, "is that Canadian minutes?" I realized what she meant: minutes calling from Canada to the US and not domestic minutes. However, for a brief moment, I imagined that those sixty divisions of an hour were like the Canadian dollar. They'd be a little more colourful, a little shorter, and worth just a little bit less.