Pennies in Heaven
Last night the guy at Taco Bell handed me my change -- 29 cents. But he didn't hand me 29 cents; he handed me a quarter and a nickel. The same thing happened last week at the falafel shop, and before that at the Indian take-out place. Slowly, subtly, the merchants of America have decided the penny must die.Of course it's just inflation and the American notion that some puny things, like alternative energy and public education, aren't worth our time. America is all about big, big, big, and a little thing like the penny doesn't stand a chance. They're gumming up the works, those pennies, the peasant class of the coin kingdom. Pennies are getting pinched right out of the system.
But where will we be without the penny? What will we pick up to have good luck? Find a quarter, pick it up, and all the day you'll have ... almost enough for bus fare. It just doesn't have that ring.
Don't get me wrong; I have nothing against nickels. Nickels will inherit the role pennies once played -- something kids can save up to buy licorice whips. Nickels can pile up on your dresser with the best of them, and you can fish them out from between the couch cushions and roll them up and forget to take them to the bank until you have eighty-seven pounds of rolled nickels in that desk drawer that you can't get open any more because it's so heavy. Nickels are ready, shiny little Boy Scouts, prepared to do the job. We'll learn to love the nickel.
But I ask you, whose profile is on the nickel? Quick now, and don't look. Benjamin Franklin? John Adams? Bryan Adams? Well, of course, it's Jefferson. Now come on, Americans -- are we ready to have a slaveholder on our lowliest, most kid-friendly coin? I, for one, will miss Mr. Lincoln, with his tragic eyes and sharp cheekbones. That was a president a kid could get a handle on. Jefferson, he was smart and all -- a genius, even -- but where's his log cabin? Where are the Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln jokes? These are things a kid needs to think about while squirreling coins away in a coffee can.
The trouble is, there's more to mourn here than just the passing of the penny. Let's face it: Kids don't buy licorice whips any more. They buy CDs and PlayStation games. Nickels, let alone pennies, don't go a long way toward that. And who puts coins in coffee cans any more? Who has coffee cans?
There's a game I like to play, called What Will Be Obsolete in a Hundred Years? The list grows daily: Typing on keyboards. Waiting in airports. Pennies. In fact, all coins will probably disappear -- and paper money, and maybe our entire monetary system. And think of all the things that will go away with them: the sound of change jangling in your pocket; the smell of a worn dollar bill; the giddy trust of passing a twenty down the row to the malt vendor at a baseball game, and seeing your change make its way back to you from hand to hand. These are things we'll miss, things future historians will never get right.
But progress doesn't slow down for sentiment, so I guess it's goodbye and good luck to you, pennies. Some of you will end up in museums, and most of you will end up in the landfill, your little greenish discs decomposing into the elements from which you were made. Goodbye, Mr. Lincoln, and nice going. I know you weren't perfect, and neither were pennies -- too soft and apt to look ratty after too many rounds through the washer. But, Mr. Lincoln, you were the coin of the realm when I was six, when you'd buy me a gumball or a handful of Spanish peanuts. You served us well, and I hope you'll say hello to the all farthings and dubloons up there in coin heaven, where nobody says you're worthless, where everyone is saved.
