The Metropolitan Museum of Art had a cafeteria-style restaurant with tables arranged around a central reflecting pool. Visitors would make a wish, throwing coins out toward the bronze fountains in the center, as though it were the Trevi Fountain.
Neighborhood kids occasionally made a surprise visit to the museum, stepping into the pool as a group and grabbing as many coins as they could before the waiters chased them out. We witnessed such a raid one day while having lunch. The waiters were obviously sympathetic to the kids, pretending not to see what was going on for several minutes, then finally ushering them out of the building. My own kids seemed shocked by the raid, and by seeing kids their own age in ragged clothes scooping up the public’s wish money. I don’t think they ever saw poverty before that, or had any idea of what it must be like to be poor.