Lost Pennies

I love change, and especially quarters.  I always buy peppermint patties at the pizza parlor with them, and when I was little I’d always put one of those Washington coins in the bubblegum machine, and watch the little colored ball drop, praying for pink.  

But I can’t help but think we take change for granted; in my lifetime, I’ve probably put a hundred of coins into a hundred bubblegum and pinball machines, and that’s a hundred of dollars lost, never meant to have come all together in my pocket.

People despise pennies it seems, because you can find them everywhere: on the streets, in the park, in the forgotten corners of your room, and in every little nook and cranny of the world.  I think perhaps you could built a house from lost pennies were you to have the patients to find enough and to glue them all together; and I think we could all be rich men if we had that patience.  The patience to find all those lost cents and put them together in our pockets.  

But no one has that patience.

We take advantage of the meager penny, and truly, of all coins.  They are not bills, and are not worthy of being used on more then in machines with cheap plastic toys and small sweets.  And as if those little smallest pieces of our soul (for that’s what they are; is it not us who had labored for them?  Was it not our souls our hearts our time our hours we sold to buy them?) how can we so easily fritter them away on things so much smaller then the hours we gave to buy the little pennies in our hands; and yet we drop those pennies, letting them fall from our fingers, and we feel lighter for it; but not because we are free of the weight of copper in our pockets, but because we have dropped little pieces of time we can never take back.

If I were to gather up all that lost time, I think I could live forever on it; I think there are enough lost pennies in the world to buy immortality.  

I always keep my change; I save it up, and I wait, and wait until the time is right.  I wait until I can see greatness even in those little copper pennies, shining from Abe Lincoln’s beard.  Because let me tell you, there is greatness in pennies, and in change, because it can do as it implies.  I think we could stop starvation with pennies alone; I think lost pennies could change the world; but no one ever thinks of that.  We only think of how useless a penny looks alone, being merely one cent; we think of only how it can buy nothing alone, and cannot be used at once, and because of that, we throw away those pennies without a second thought.  We never think that a hundred pennies make a dollar, and that ten thousand pennies make a hundred dollars; we want instant gratification.  We see only one penny, and not ten thousand, though the potential is there.  

Do not lose your pennies for they are precious seeds; plant them, water them, and treat them with care, and someday, you may grow something truly great.  For in Lincoln’s eye glows a memory of your lost hours spent to buy him, and most importantly potential.  But a potential for what?  The choice is yours:

Whether the penny is destined to be used save the world, or to buy bubble gum doesn’t matter; but don’t throw them away.  You never know if it will be your penny that will be the one that rocks the world.