"Find a penny, pick it up, and all day you'll have good luck!"
Maybe it was this little expression that first caused me to place so much more value on a penny than one cent. If it can bring good luck just by picking it up, what other amazing things could happen after that?
Penny loafers were in style when I was in elementary school. Every one had them, but no one put a penny in them. I thought they should come with a penny in them if they were called penny loafers.
My dad had a Lionel Richie phase at one time and I loved to sing Penny Lover.
Pennies were also popping up in several other songs and expressions here and there, in my piggy bank and sprinkled all around for any one to pick up...
"Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes!"
Because adults were always discarding them, they were always in abundance. My parents had a huge collection of pennies in their closet. Look at all this money, I thought, just sitting here....
My sister and I played with it sometimes in our make-believe games. I think all kids do that. It's the only money you're really allowed to play with, touch and have control over--the stray dogs of money, the rejects. Your parents tell you that it is "so dirty," and that makes it even better somehow. You're willing to get your hands dirty. You'll never forget the smell of pennies on your hands, the feel of a hand-full squeezed in your grip, the sliding and the pinching, the sound of the raining down of pennies, buttons, carpet fuzz, and pet hair.
When I was about 7, my cousin and I decided that we were going to start a charity that would help all of our neighbors. We filled tube socks with pennies and walked down the street sprinkling a few shiny coins into each mailbox. We got a big, scary lecture when our moms caught us. We were told we had committed a federal offense and could serve prison time. Apparently, pennies are very serious business that you can't just go around passing out for free. ;)
We had a pool in the back yard of my childhood home. My sister, my cousins, and I used to love to walk out to the front drive and sit on the warm asphalt on our towels and eat a snack. One time, I had some pennies left over from our 7-11 candy purchase, and it happened that my pennies fit perfectly into a small hole in our driveway. I became fixated on this perfect fit and began placing pennies in all of the holes in our driveway. Then, it occurred to me that I could go to prison for this. This giving stuff is hard work that involves a lot of red tape. I covered each deposit with a Band-aid, and I felt like I had given back to the earth in some small and strange way. This time, I decided, it would have to be a secret.
My very first crime, a civil disobedience, had been committed.
"Here's a penny for your thoughts, a quarter for your call and all of your momma's love."
