In For A Penny...

My friend Christopher in BFE likes to go treasure hunting with his metal detector.  I've seen some of the stuff he unearths and a lot of it is really impressive.  Looks like a fun and potentially rewarding hobby. 

 I learned down here that Floridians are so rich or blind that they throw coinage in the streets and on sidewalks.  It may be one of those "city" things but for the most part I keep my head down to the ground most of the time I'm walking.  I have found many dollars worth of pennies, dimes, and nickels down here; my biggest take at a car wash once was around $3.00 - just left behind on the cement abutment between bays, presumably by someone who didn't want the job of cleaning them from being sticky and stuck around inside their car.  Midwest tightness or borderline poor, I'll be glad to take them off your hands.  Money is money wherever you find it, and I find plenty on the streets and parking lots around here.      

Like most folks I have a budget and I try to stay within it, more or less.  I allow myself a weekly cash allowance and I get my groceries, any incidentals and eating out with this allowance.  Anything left over from week to week goes into my secret compartment as a kind of emergency fund.  I explain all this utterly worthless factoid in order to explain this penny.  I used to ride a lot here and there when I was at Shawshank, but at Bedlam the traffic is such that I'd rather not mess with it and so I walk.  I walk every Thursday or Friday to get my allowance funds that are at an ATM at the grocery store.  Along this path I have to cross East Bay Drive which is a 6 lane major road.

One such trip I espied something coppery while in the crosswalk.  It lay about a yard and a half out of the walk in the center of one of the lanes.  It was indeed, the penny pictured here.  I walked on by,  half mad I didn't dart out and grab it.  Next week, again, it was still there but I kept on walking.  I asked myself why I didn't grab it and the answer was kind of vague:

• I don't think I wanted anyone stopped at the light to see me dart over  for something on the road that may label me a derelict or bum.  Here I am worried about what a bunch of strangers will think whom I have no connection, or will ever, while grabbing free money from the pavement.  

And then I started asking questions about what it said about me.  I didn't like some of the possible answers.   I decided, then,  that the next week I would grab that penny if it was still there.

There were a couple of thoughts I had while I walked outside the crosswalk and bent down in front of all these stopped cars and picked up this penny.  None are particularly profound but it gave me an opportunity to look at myself and to give myself a pep talk on certain things to keep in mind.  

• George Patton always used as his mantra,  "Audacieux, audacieux, toujours audacieux."   Audacious, audacious, always audacious.  I think that is the spice that we sprinkle on our activities every once in a while that become memory makers.  Once when I was at Cotton's/Timmy's on Rte 150 for Bucket night with Neighbor Tim a storm blew up and instead of sitting tight while it ran its course we decide to run back into BFE in as blistering a rainfall as I remember.  Couldn't see the road, and we went like a couple bat's out of Hell, but we made it and it was because of that audaciousness that I have a memory that will last till I die.  Another example is grabbing an artifact from the old Ponemah pumping station with the Wombie a couple years ago.  Yet another is climbing the grain elevator at BFE once and for all next time I'm in Northlandia.  And while a penny in the road isn't perhaps very audacious, it is, nonetheless a signpost that reads, "If given an opportunity, do the daring. "  We all need to do the daring once in a while.  

• To Hell with what people think.  Who gives a mole rat's ass? I understand there are political considerations and appearances with jobs and other places we inhabit where staying under the radar is commensurate with conformity, but in all other areas,  to hell with what people think.  Be yourself and if you want that penny, walk over, reach down and pick it up.   

• Look at that poor penny.  You can barely distinguish any of the normal features found on the one-cent piece.  I have no idea how long that penny has been trampled, shoved, run over, skidded, slid, scraped, mauled, or crushed by traffic.  But, you know what, it still retains its value.  Its somewhat like all the rest of us.  We have been hurt, stressed, or endure all the things life throws at us, but we retain that distinctive quality that makes us…us.  We still retain our value, too.  Perhaps grayer, a few more wrinkles, a bit less steady, but we remain essentially ourselves, and loved by others.  

Sorry to be a bit windy about a penny lying in the street.  But there are lessons to be learned in the things we do every day.  There is a chance you will see a coin lying on the sidewalk someday.  Don't walk by.  Pick it up.