I recently re-discovered the
value of
pennies.
I've started picking them up off the
street now, despite the
taboo that surrounds that very exercise. In fact, whole groups of people (those
economic types) would have us believe that we'd be better off without pennies in our economies.
I used to be one of those people, I think. I'd see a penny on the ground (or a group of six or seven, even!) and just
nonchalantly walk right past them.
Not anymore.
Perhaps it's the fact that I've been rather strapped for cash these past few months, and will continue to be so until the end of
September until my first big paycheque from teaching comes through. Or perhaps it's the fact that the rather
dysfunctional parking meter in the
parking lot where I
work presently accepts pennies as if they were
nickels (and sometimes
dimes!), saving me precious funds.
Or perhaps (most likely) it's because I've come to realize that certain things that seem to have little value at the present time or that I
take for granted have been disappearing on me as of late. The
trust of a good, good
friend. The
company of my girlfriend (no, I didn't make her disappear; she's leaving for
Winnipeg in mid-August, and I can't go with her) for 10 months. My
sanity, bit by bit.
Obviously this isn't a new
revelation to most. But perhaps, by re-discovering the value of the one-cent
coin, I can start to re-discover just what is important to me, or at least what
should be important.
That, and I can park at work for 3 hours at the princely sum of sixty
cents instead of the outlandish three
dollars.