Children always appreciate small gifts of money. Mum or dad, of course, provide a regular allowance, but uncles and aunts are always a source of extra income. With some children, small sums go a long way. If fifty pence pieces are not exchanged for sweets, they rattle for months in money boxes. Only very thrifty children manage to fill up a money box. For most of them, fifty pence is a small fortune which is quickly spent. My nephew, George, has a money box but it is always empty. Very few of the fifty pence pieces and pound coins I have given him have found their way there. I gave George quite a lot of pocket money and yet he is always broke. On his way to the sweet shop, he drops his fifty pence and it disappears down a drain. George takes great interest in machines of all sorts. Whenever he comes across old-fashioned weighing scales in shop, he cannot resist the temptation to weigh himself. Last week, I took him to a local sweet shop which had an old-fashioned weighing machine at the entrance. As soon as we entered the shop, George ran eagerly to the machine and began to examine it carefully. I tried to convince him that the machine was no good to him because he could not possibly weigh fifty pence worth, but he insisted on giving it a try. We both watched in silence as George carefully inserted his fifty pence piece into the slot. The machine immediately began to shake and rattle and the needle on the dial went completely mad, swinging from one extreme to the other. A moment later, it stopped shaking and the needle came to rest at zero. George looked at it with awe and then back at me. I tried to reassure him by pointing out that he would have his fifty pence worth of trouble after all.
The weighing machine at the sweet shop entrance was an old-fashioned mechanical device. It had a large dial with numbers, a coin slot for fifty pence pieces, and a platform for standing. However, this particular machine had developed some peculiar problems. When coins were inserted, instead of working normally, the mechanism would shake violently and the needle would swing wildly from one extreme to the other before settling at zero, giving no weight reading at all.
George tried repeatedly to make the weighing machine work. First, he gently inserted the coin and waited patiently. When nothing happened, he tried tapping the machine lightly. As his frustration mounted, he began shaking the machine more vigorously. He tried inserting different coins, pressing various parts of the mechanism, and even talking to the machine as if it could understand him. Each failed attempt made him more determined but also more frustrated. The machine seemed to have a mind of its own, refusing to cooperate despite all his efforts.
After all the failed attempts, the solution came in the most unexpected way. George accidentally bumped into the machine while stepping back in frustration. Suddenly, the machine sprang to life! The needle moved smoothly to show his correct weight, and everything worked perfectly. It turned out that the machine just needed a gentle bump in the right place. The irony was clear - after all the careful attempts to make it work properly, the solution was completely accidental. George looked at the working machine with amazement, and I couldn't help but smile at the lesson: sometimes the simplest problems have the most complicated solutions, and sometimes the most complicated problems have the simplest solutions.
And so George finally got his fifty pence worth - not of sweets, but of trouble, just as I had predicted. The experience taught us both valuable lessons. Sometimes the most frustrating situations can become the most memorable and educational ones. George learned that persistence doesn't always mean forcing a solution, and I was reminded that children's curiosity and determination, even when misguided, can lead to unexpected discoveries. The old weighing machine, with all its quirks and problems, gave us a story worth far more than fifty pence. In the end, we both agreed that some troubles are indeed worth their weight in gold, or at least in laughter and learning.