“NOT WORTH A PENNY!”

When I think of coins, for some reason, I think of pennies first. You know, the pesky little coin that weighs down your purse, fills up your car console and that you tell the cashier to just keep.

Our government is talking seriously again of doing away with the penny. I, for one, think it’s a great idea.

The first “ copper”  I remember was the one I clutched tightly in my sweaty hand as I leaned against the candy counter while my mother did her weekly grocery shopping. I agonized over the candy corn, Hershey kisses and marshmallow bananas. Then again, I loved to get a pack of candy cigarettes. The cigarettes were cloyingly sweet, but how sophisticated I would be taking long draws and puffing in the back seat on the way home. Maybe I’d even blow a few smoke rings.

Later, around aged ten, that coin became more important and a source of humiliation.  When I was sent to the store with a dime for a loaf of bread that cost ten cents and a penny tax that made the total eleven, I knew I was in trouble. I would tell my mother, “Mom, the lady always says eleven cents”. She would simply say “No, you tell her it’s a sin to tax the daily bread”. And then she usually added, “After all, right is right”. I begged for that penny so I wouldn’t be embarrassed by the A. J. Bayless clerk. But my mother instructed,   “Just say, I’m sorry, my mother didn’t give me a penny for tax”

Years later I boarded a city bus carrying my chubby daughter and a heavy grocery sack full of pennies. The slow walk up Central Avenue in heels (because you always wore high heels when you went downtown), lugging the pennies and dragging the one year old to the bank was not easy. I remember it was summer and she kept trying to walk behind me in my shadow which made for really slow going.  I hated those pennies.

Her grandparents had given her a penny piggy bank at birth and filled it up over the year. I doubt that many kids get very excited over piggy banks nowdays.

Since the banks were only open during the week, I was expected to take her and her fortune to open a savings account in her name. It was some kind of family tradition, I guess. Anyway, again I was doing what everyone expected me to do but I was not too impressed with this ritual.

When the bus swished to a stop for our trip home all I had to do was hoist the husky

little girl clutching her savings book up the steps and sink gratefully into a soft seat for the ride home.

I say, get rid of those pennies.