Dear Mrs. Lincoln,
We sympathize with you for the loss of your husband…twice.
We’ll miss seeing his face in every handful of change – nestled in the car floorboard, tucked between the couch cushions, hiding in drawers we forget to open.
We’ll miss stumbling upon him on the street, lucky to have him with us for just a moment – picking him up like an old friend bringing us a slice of fortune.
But most of all, we’ll miss the simple joy of trading his face for a piece of candy. That, Mrs. Lincoln, was democracy in action.
But here’s the thing – pennies, like all things we lose, seem insignificant until we realize how deeply they were embedded in our lives. How often did we touch them without thinking – slipping them in and out of our pockets, letting them fall into cracks? And yet, in their quiet presence, they filled spaces that nothing else could. They were the humble currency of every small moment, grounding us in the mundane and the meaningful at once.
A penny on a railroad track…a rite of passage, placing him there with an oncoming train. Why? Just to see what would happen. It never got old, did it? That moment of waiting for the collision, the sound of it being flattened, the anticipation building as the train roared closer. There was something electric about that simple act – an innocence in seeing what would happen next, without the weight of consequence.
And the scent – there was something strangely powerful about the way a penny smelled. A little copper, a lot of possibility. It was the scent of new beginnings, the faint trace of change just around the corner. A penny was more than metal; it was a little promise, a whisper of what might come.
Rest in peace, Copper Lincoln. You will always be the one…cent.
In loving memory,
~ The Radical Left
~~~ ~~~ ~~~
Where was the last place you found a penny, or a penny surprised you? Drop it in the comments.