penny less penny more, or less

He bent down to pick up a penny. He was tired, walking uphill, backpack slung over his left shoulder, his left, then his right when it got to be too heavy. A rivulet of sweat rolled down his back. Not having worn a hat, the sun beat down on his head. But he was not seating there. He was not much of a sweater, if that's what a sweating person can be called. Spices, and sometimes ketchup, made his forehead sweat. Still, he slid the bag down to the roadway, reached his left hand down to the tarry asphalt and pried loose the penny, the ancient coin so disfigured it appeared to be an artifact from another civilization, or from a civilization, because sometimes he wondered if this one qualified for that nomenclature. He did not bother to look to decipher the penny's date, just put it into his left jeans pocket, feeling the rough surface of the rescued penny. It was an act of faith and defiance, both. Faith in what, the future. Defiance against the taunts and taboos of youth: man, look at you, you go down for a penny.

He knew it would not add to his capital gains in any seismically detectable way, nor to the GDP of a nation, a nation claiming to be part of civilization, there's that word again.

Then, later in the same week, with much cooler April weather, in the most urban of Syracuse downtown streets, less litter-strewn fresh from Earth Day, or a little more litterless owing to Stephanie Miner's nascent mayoral administration, he bent down to grasp and hold onto another penny, this one shiny, 1998, it could be 1998, because it appeared to be the shiniest in his Dockers pants pocket, left, but now, with five pennies jangling, it was hard to tell which was which, what was what. So, maybe it was an economic trend, maybe pinching pennies (a plurality was needed) did indeed yield capital gains, not just urban epiphanies.

A Penny for Your Thoughts, Redux

Two days in a row I walked by a penny on the sidewalk. I did not pick it up. Time was, out of a sense of good sense (and cents) and savings, one would pick up a penny, even if for good luck. I did not bother. This disappoints me. Not that I harbor sentimental illusions about how much I am missing out on, how much my savings potential is diminished. (On that note, I am diligent. I have a large change jar, sometimes two. The resultant savings have paid for trips. I have also started a savings envelope, to which I contribute sometimes more than once a day: for fun and emergencies. I highly recommend these pecuniary practices.) Would I stoop to retrieve a dollar bill? Yes. But my inaction reflects a mindset, a way of thinking that got us into this economic morass. Many would pass up a dollar, I'd wager (though wagering is against the spirit of saving). Would they sneeze at a five or a ten? Walking on the sidewalk, when I was in first grade or so, I found a five-dollar bill, on the grass, moored there waiting for me on a windy day, if memory serves. What a thrill! What would that translate to in today's dollars, or euros? There are unwritten conventions, or used to be, regarding such findings. If you are in a hallway of a building and you find, say, a benjamin, are you honor-bound to inquire if anyone has lost one? Is that naive? What do you do next: invite claimants to recite the serial number? Funny thing is, I don't know if the penny is still there, waiting. Maybe it's a 1909 S VDB penny.