Spare Change

The penny beneath the old battered sofa had lost its shine. No longer the bright reddish gold of its youth; it was a dull brown and stained green with the burden of time. At one point in its life, it had been solid and strong, able to be held and rapped from one finger to another, able to be tossed and land with a sound thud, able to save the day. It was once as lethal as a bullet but as precious as gold. But those days were long gone. The penny was worn down and literally weathering away; a thin shadow of what it had been before. It could remember the freshness of being first imprinted with the 16th president—a painful yet honorable right of passage—but it had been years, decades, even, since the day the penny was first minted, first born, from the womb of an ore of pure copper. Lincoln’s face was now thin, flattened and bent, like a forgotten tattoo on an old man. Honest Abe had not achieved any greatness by putting his likeness on its side. No one had been saved. No one had been set free. In its long life (dating over 70 years) the penny had achieved nothing, except to find the slightest amount of solace beneath a tattered cushion where no coin like it dwelt.

It scared the quarter to be under the cushion. It never believed it would be cast aside. Sure, it was slightly tarnished, but only from its constant use. It was not decaying, not stained like the penny. But times were changing. At a point in time, quarters had been as vital to any person as a dollar bill. But now, to its own sad realization, it seemed it was nothing more than a penny. The old penny was sympathetic, of course. It tried to be comforting to the new spare change. “Someone will come for you,” the penny would reassure the quarter, “they need you.” It knew how valuable a quarter was, now needed for vending machines, pay phones, and washers; places where the penny was unwanted. The penny was sure someone would look for it. Yet everyday the quarter would grieve, telling the penny of how much good it could have done the world, and how horrible it was to be doomed to be under a rotten worthless cushion. At times like these, the penny would try to be sympathetic and offer a reassuring word, even though he didn’t think the cushion, which was like a home to him, was worthless. The quarter was never reassured. It was probably because, as hard as it tried, the penny could never really understand how the quarter felt. Even though the quarter was stranded beneath the polysynthetic barrier, it was still worth something, not worthless like a penny. In time, eager hands found the quarter, and the penny was left alone again in the darkness, now, with only the company of the dark threadbare cushion above it.

It had been years since the penny had seen the light. But as it passed from one hand to the other of the small child, it could faintly remember the outside world and its purpose as a 1 cent coin. It watched intently as the child scrutinized it, breathing heavily with excitement, then smiling, and then being very serious once again; like an accountant studying his books, or a collector inspecting his final piece. The penny did its best to look impressive, to gleam in the light as it would have done so long ago, but it knew that with all its efforts it could only produce a dull brown aura. Still, the child smiled, and lifted it up into the sun, as if to intensify the effect, which it did, and, as the penny sent its orange shine cascading down to the bedazzled face of the child, it could remember the old days and was proud to have been a part of them.

“Jason, you put that down! You don’t know where that’s been!” it heard the child’s mother cry.

The startled boy jumped, and carelessly let the penny fall to the ground.

“Yes, mother.” He grunted his reply.

As the penny rested on the shaggy tan carpet, now in the open air with the sun shining upon its face, it was content, because now it finally had remembered it was worth something.

lol, I just realised right now that half of you are probably thinking "WTF? a penny?" but hey, I'm exposed right now, so be easy on me.