It had been a typical autumn morning. I was taking the half-hour walk to school, my fourth week of my sophomore year. My scruffy Keds stepped over the crisp, golden remains of the many oak trees, lining the neighborhood, each branch hanging onto those lovely red and brown leaves. The foliage rustled in the cool wind and I snuggled deeper into my white blazer. The breeze whipped my dark, thick hair into a frenzy, curling and
reaching out like the snakes of the Gorgon sisters.
Crossing the street, something caught my eye. It shone in the early sun on the side of the curb. Curiosity got the best of me and I walked over, squatted down and picked up a small, copper penny. I stood up and held it in my hand. It stood out on my palm, like a pool of rust and mud in a land of pale, pink sand. Enthralled, I flipped it over and peered
at the profile of the Queen. The penny was from 1950.
I think back to the day the penny was manufactured. A chilly evening in December.
The copper was pressed into coins and the maple leaf was printed on the back of the queen. The penny was squeezed into a package with its fellow members, and shipped off to banks and stores.
On her first day at the department store, a young woman is unpacking the coins into the cash register. An elderly man buys a bag of cheap candy and a box of tools, and the young woman smiles and hands him his change, the new penny included. The man thanks her, wishes her a good day, and returns home to give the candy to his eager grandchild.
Washing the man's clothes in a basin, the old wife of the man finds the change he forgot to remove and hands the penny to her small granddaughter. Her blue eyes shine with happiness as she is dismissed to play. She rolls the coins on the sidewalk until fatigue overtakes her.
The penny lays forgotten and abandoned, as it makes it's final round into the nearby gutter. The canal of sewage, tinted with the grease of human waste, carries it to a river.
A young, homeless boy, fishing by himself near the river in the summer sun, finds it, cleans it with a scabby finger, and places it in the pocket of his torn shirt. On his way to his alley in the city, it falls out of a hole in the fabric and onto the heated pavement.
A handsome, middle-aged business man stands, waiting for a bus. He sees the coin, and picks it up. This little money meant almost nothing to him. The glint of the copper shone in his hazel eyes, and he clutched the dirty coin in his hand nevertheless. He thought about his wife and children, his large manor, waiting for him at home. The comforts of life. He doesn't think twice as he spots beggars on the streets, poor and lonely.
As he passes by another homeless woman that day, he drops it into her plastic cup of assorted luck, collected from the hands of sympathetic passer bys and irritated employees of the city. He cringes at her filth and social disgrace, inwardly thankful that he was
wealthy and prosperous, and walks to work, suddenly proud of himself for such a grand donation.
The woman tries to survive by begging for food and digging in the trash for the
precious things people have left behind. She has no home, no family to wait for her when she tucks in the evening. Only the shadows of the smelly theater down the street, the back of plastic seats and moldy popcorn, are her everyday friends.
With the coins she has, she buys herself a few cookies from the Boy Scouts across the street.
The scouts, thrilled with their daily earnings as they pass off several cookies to the woman, shake their red containers and rush to their leader, waiting by the community center door.
The smallest scout stays behind as he gathers his change into his box. His young heart aches with sadness. He glances at the scout leader by the door, and back at the woman.
He grabs his box and runs after the woman. The shaking of the container causes the penny to fall out, but he gives no notice. The penny lies on the middle of the road, face up to the brilliant sunshine.
The boy hands her the box of his earnings. Her face lights up and she cries tears of joy as she thanks him. The boy, feeling confident, leaves without another word, only a grin on his face.
She had probably never seen so much money in her whole life. He feels like, for once, he'd done something right.
Then he turns back to look ahead at the other side of the street. But his happiness is short-lived.
A driver leaves his van and begins crying for help when he sees the lifeless corpse of the little boy, who never got to see the sun go down.
The penny is dragged onto the curb by years and years of cars passing by, homeless people pushing their shopping carts across the road, street urchins kicking it around as they walk about during the night without a place to come home to.
I held the penny in my hand, it's past flashing before my eyes. My fingers brushed it's rough, dirty surface.
It's funny how you'd find something as insignificant as a penny, but never a
twenty-dollar bill or a toonie. People hold onto those so tightly, but wouldn't care less if a
cent fell out of their savings.
But even a penny, however unimportant it seems, has a story. All it needs is somebody to carry it. I pocket it, smiling to myself with a vow to never let it out of my sight, and sealing the lifelines of the hand-me-down penny.