Old Money for a New Year

On New Year's Eve, as I was taking a cab to the train station to pop out to London to spend the night socializing at a friend's place, my cab driver leaned over while at a stop light and handed me a small bill about the size of Canadian Tire money. "Here, take this, it will give you luck!" he said. "And Happy New Year!"

As I would discover, the bill was 100 Iranian Rials, worth just slightly more than 1¢ Canadian. Certainly not a large sum of money. But I appreciate the notion of handing out cash to people as a sign of good luck. We arrived very quickly after that at my destination, so I didn't get a chance to get an explanation of whether this was some sort of typical tradition, or if this was just his own idea and a way to dispose of some currency he couldn't possibly convert, but that wouldn't really change anything anyway.