Finders Keepers
Find a penny
And pick it up.
Rub it shiny
To bring good luck.
A little boy has a knack for spotting treasures on the ground. If you don’t believe me, check his pockets at night. But be careful. Little boy treasures have been known to bite.
Cloistered in the deep confines may be a rusty nail, a pecan or two, a good skipping rock, a feather, a discarded AAA battery and always a penny. While discoveries may vary from pocket to pocket, the penny will be there unless he has already remembered to deposit it in his penny jar.
Is there a little boy without a penny jar? I’ve yet to meet one. And where does he get all those little brown coins whose weight collective has been known to break a favorite antique cracker jar?
Granddad may empty his pockets of one cent pieces into the tyke’s hands. Older brother may have carelessly tossed change from school lunch on the kitchen counter from whence the youngster has carefully retrieved what he considered rightfully his own. A cautious adult may have offered the smallest in value coins as a Halloween treat.
But for the most part, a little boy finds the lowly penny carelessly tossed on the ground. Just watch a kindergartner walk to school. Maybe it’s because he’s so close to the ground in stature, but he can spot a treasure a mile up the sidewalk.
At times, he resembles Hansel in search of the breadcrumbs leading back to home. He’s even been known to detour from the beaten path in order to claim whatever his eye can see. But he never traverses very far without finding a penny. It’s the nature of the animal.
Then he grows up to be a teenager. Maybe, with age, his eyes begin to stray elsewhere but one thing’s for certain, he can’t see anything in plain sight. Not his socks in the drawer, nor his shoes at the door, not his book in his locker, not his pencil behind his ear. And the excuse is always the same: someone has stolen my blue socks, my Reeboks, my novel, my number two!
With such a mind set, he certainly doesn’t spy pennies lying beneath his feet. And if he could, he’s certainly above retrieving them. After all, it’s not cool to stoop down to pick up dirty clothes, wadded paper fallen short of the trash can, books on the floor, much less a lowly lost penny.
Watch a teenager at school. Should the glimmer a coin catch his eye, he may step on the penny to acknowledge its presence. Or, if he’s even more brazen, he may kick it aside. But stoop down to pick it up? Never!
What has happened to wide-eyed enthusiasm for the marvels around him? Somewhere along the way, it often gets lost in the realization that others may be watching. Usually, they’re not; they’re far too concerned that someone’s watching them. But there’s always one, who in his own insecurity, is ready to laugh at anyone who doesn’t conform.
Hopefully, as he grows older, he becomes less concerned about what others may think and recaptures his enthusiasm for the treasures around him. And, thank goodness for small miracles! For, it is only in our abilities to look and see, really see, that we polish the skills necessary in dividing overwhelming problems into small parts much easier to tackle on a day-to-day basis.
And if you doubt this premise, count the pennies in your jar. It only takes five pennies to make a nickel and a mere 20 nickels add up to a dollar. We know that; yet, we adults, who would much prefer to gamble on a one-in-a million chance lottery, are always surprised by the sum total of pennies we’ve saved painlessly one by one.
But the little boy isn’t. He knows real treasure when he sees it and isn’t afraid to grab hold and hang on.
Find a penny,
Pick it up.
Rub it shiny
To bring good luck!
And it will, too, because treasures abound when we look for them.
1988
Comentários