A Five Penny Walk or The Streets Are Paved With Gold!

$.05

My beloved and I have been walking together since our three girls were old enough to be left alone for a half an hour. Cathy was left in charge, as she was probably 12 and of an age where it was legal to leave them. We took off to walk the dykes in West Richmond which were only about 5 minutes away by foot. It was wonderful to be on our own, just the two of us. And let's face it, no matter what, our girls would have assured us that they were fine to be left on their own. I don't even want to know what they got up to when we walked away!

The point of this being that as we walked, it wouldn't be uncommon to find a coin or two dropped that had dropped out of someone's pocket. For many a year, we just stooped down and picked it up, and pocketed our "bounty". Finding coins became almost as regular as our walks. Noticing a trend, we decided it would be fun to collect it all up in a glass juice jar, the little individual ones that were popular years ago, just to see how much we collected. Thus began the habit of a lifetime. I cannot walk by a penny without stooping down and scooping it up.

In addition to a lot of foreign coinage, we have found loonies and twoonies, pennys, nickles, dimes, quarters and $2.bills when they were in vogue. The biggest finds were $5, $10, and $20 bills-believe me those were exciting days! One time walking down a totally deserted pathway with not a soul in sight, I found $40.00. I felt bad about that, because I knew someone was going to be upset at a loss like this.

I must put in here also, that my darling Dad still holds the record. He found a one hundred dollar bill all rolled up really, really tightly. Probably used for snorting coke. He noticed it but didn't realize it was money when he got out of his car at Willowbrook Mall, he kicked it with his foot. On the way out of the store it was still there so he stooped down to investigate and sure enough $100 dollars. (It's long gone people, so don't come after me for reimbursement!)

I can't tell you just how many juice jars were filled and refilled, each time tossing the bounty into a plastic baggie waiting to be counted. Before we moved to The Grove, we decided the time was right to total it all up and "cash in". The result was astounding. The grand total was $192.32! Not too shoddy for roadkill money.

When we moved to The Grove, we thought, should we bother with "collecting", aw, why not we decided. Yesterday is was a dime, today a 5 penny walk. Not all at once mind you--two in one spot, three at another. The most we've ever found was a wet $5.00 bill after a very early morning walk. That was a treat. We've graduated to a much larger plastic jar that formerly contained canned peaches. It will be a while before the treat of counting our bounty but in the meantime it's adding up and it sure is fun tossing in the coins.

I guess the moral of the story is this, a penny saved, or in this case found, adds up faster than you think. So the next time you spy a lonely penny laying there all alone and forelorn, scoop it up and put it in a juice jar on the top of your fridge-it adds up. But if you live in The Grove, leave them for us! You won't get rich, but you can have some fun while you are trying. Now, if I could only find the other half of that roadkill penny . . .

Habits first are like cobwebs, then they become cables!