Inflation: the jar lid story

Self-tutoring about economics: the tutor recalls a story.

When I used to visit family in the Lower Mainland, my uncle – we’ll call him X – was among them. He had a daughter whom we’ll call A: she’s my cousin. She was around eight years old then, and a firecracker: she was a lot of fun to be around.

I had another cousin over there, B, a year older than A, who was my aunt’s daughter. I liked them, too. However, for some reason, the action centred around A’s place.

Yet, A and B spent a lot of time together: they were chums. Therefore, hanging out with A would lead to hanging out with both A and B, sometimes. One evening in particular, while the adults talked in another room, A, B, and I started our own conversation. I asked them about school, this, and that. We were all in a good mood, and wanted to have fun.

The house we were in was an old farmhouse and a bit rambling. Importantly, its downstairs was hardly used, and seemed to be bigger than its upstairs. It was a proper basement and had many rooms that contained old farming wares – canning jars and lids, for instance – as well as other hardware and books.

It would have been a great place for hide and seek, but A and B were already too old to be interested in that. However, a game did develop, I forget how, surrounding some jar lids. We started with 8: they got 4 and so did I. The object was to keep your lids and collect the other person’s: them against me.

The game sounds absurd, since it would be so easy to hide the jar lids so they could never be found. However, we barely had any time to hide them; right away it became like a game of tag. After giving me my four jar lids, they immediately started trying to steal them back. Occasionally I’d attempt to collect theirs, which they’d left, at first, on a coffee table. Soon, we were each chasing each other back and forth, downstairs and back up, trying to collect all the jar lids, and so win.

They knew the house better than I did, and sometimes would disappear. When that happened, I’d hide or re-hide my lids, then try to discover theirs. Sometimes they would sneak up on me.

At one point I placed my lids upstairs, in plain sight, but in a place not easy to notice. This time, though, A and B didn’t follow me upstairs. I waited for about fifteen minutes, then realized the game was probably over. When they finally did come back up, they went to A’s father to tell him someone was coming to pick them up: apparently, using a phone downstairs (this was before every kid had a mobile phone), they had made plans with some other friends to go to the movies. Five minutes later, they were gone.

I lamented their departure, wondering if we would repeat such a fun visit. Upstairs the adults continued theirs. I joined them for awhile, but then, getting another coffee in the kitchen, I took a detour downstairs.

I was sure that, the last time I’d run upstairs, my cousins had planned to pursue me, but had got distracted somehow. I wondered what they’d been up to in those few minutes that had precipitated their quitting our game. Now they were gone, I decided to return downstairs, looking for traces of what had transpired.

It didn’t take long to find why the game had ended. In one room, dozens of jar lids were strewn across an old table; they hadn’t been there while our game ensued. Next to them sat a box which contained hundreds more of the jar lids.

Clearly, my cousins had discovered that huge supply of the jar lids on a shelf somewhere, probably while looking for a place to hide their four lids. Since our game had functioned on the scarcity of the lids, meaning it had made sense to take each others’, there was no point in playing it when hundreds of jar lids became available. Therefore, after discovering the surplus of jar lids, they’d quit the game without telling me and called their friends. A telephone was apparent in the room.

In that case, my cousins – A and B – realized the power of inflation: once the jar lids became plentiful, they weren’t worth playing for.

The next time I saw my cousins, they were tweens. While still a lot of fun, they were too grown up for any pursuits like the jar lid game. Moreover, they were always on their way somewhere. Today, they’re in their late 30s, and probably don’t even recall that evening. However, it was a lot of fun:)