He's 45, which means he and I compare notes. We reminisce about how the quarter-sized coins, which hit the scene in the 1960s only for certain school students, made their debut for the rest of us in '82. That was back when he was almost 10 and I was barely in puberty myself. As we chat, the trolley barrels past my alma mater, Beverly Hills Middle School, the first place I ever used a token to get to. I don't tell him how my dad had a deli near the El, and that tokens got me to summer jobs in the city on oven-hot trains for a $100-a-week paycheck.