I keep the receipt in the plastic sleeve of my badge holder, behind my ID.

I don’t show it often. Maybe once a month.

But every so often a woman sits down in that chair and starts doing the arithmetic out loud — what she can sell, what she can do without, how much a scan costs if you just pay cash — and she gets a certain look, and I know the look, and I take the badge off and turn it over and put it on the desk in front of her.

**MARBURY’S SALON SUPPLY — HAIR, RAW, UNTREATED, 24IN, DARK — $150.00 — CASH.**

“That’s mine,” I say. “That’s what I got for it. October, two years ago, Commercial Street in Springfield.”

Most of them cry. Some of them laugh, which I prefer.