Penny Serenade

"I have never not stopped to pick up a penny on the sidewalk.

And, when the pennies I spot are heads up, I make a wish. It’s always the same wish, same as the prayer I recite on those occasions when I am reflective in such a way. My spiritual construct is comprised of equal parts religion, magic, mysticism, voodoo, luck, karma, juju, chance, fate, justice, transcendental meditation, yoga, and single malt. Not necessarily in that order. So, I lean in to making a wish when the penny is heads up.

For any other denomination, you may see me dive in like twenty-somethings in the mosh pit of a Lallapalooza concert. Twice in my life I have found a twenty-dollar bill, and once I arrived only seconds after someone picked up a fifty-dollar bill nearly at my feet. I knew it wasn’t mine because at the time I had very few dollars of any kind, let alone a fifty-dollar bill. The guy who picked it up even asked me if it was mine. I could have lied.

I have a jar of wheat pennies somewhere. As a kid, my friends and I collected them. The back side of pennies of that era had two wheat stalks before it was changed to some neo-gothic building façade and most recently to some kind of stylized shield. A not-so-subtle drift away from our agrarian strength to urban fortitude to something akin to what…Captain America? Who makes these decisions?

Not every book is written in prose and I have one of those old blue paper coin books with slots for pennies of every minting that I started when I was a kid. I dug it out recently and found that I had a few pennies made of steel. These were produced during World War II when copper was in great demand and vital to the war effort. Those pennies are now worth somewhere between $5 and $10 dollars, not that I would sell them. They tell a story as well as words can about those years of sacrifice and determination I suppose.

The announcement to end coinage of the penny and phase it out completely seems wrong to me and not just for sentimental reasons. I’ve read the arguments for doing so – it costs more to make a penny than it’s one cent value, and it doesn’t buy much of anything like it used to, and more.

In my view, from a practical standpoint, I would rather we get rid of the nickel than the penny. I can make up nickels with pennies, but I can never make up one cent, or two, or three, or four. And once gone, they’re gone for good. Like the airlines that assess a surcharge when gas prices are high but never seem to offer a discount when gas prices are low despite the fuzzy math they proffer to explain why. Prices are going to go up. And trust your mother, pennies count.

It seems to me the value of the penny should not be tied solely to its intrinsic or spending power. It represents something far more valuable, something to do with the value of our nation, our principles, and the full faith and trust one can rely on in our financial system, and America itself. As someone has said, America is an ideal, not just a place. To me, the penny is more than one cent.

Like the penny and the overall strength of the US dollar in world markets, our influence in the world is also declining. So, instead of getting rid of the penny, make it count for something greater than the cost to produce it in the first place. And, don’t get rid of what America stands for and what it once meant to our friends and allies. Let’s remind ourselves, and show the world, their true value.

Let’s not ask ourselves to round up when we spend pennies; let’s not ask the world to round down when they think of our virtue, and let’s not get rid of either.Penny Seranade"