Thinking Out Loud

By Gerard Meister

I must admit that despite the onslaught of the calendar and having attained my biblical allotment (and then some), I still feel that I'm a kid at heart; and in mind; and (sometimes) even in body. Of course I always knew that this blissful state could not go on forever - nothing does - yet I was still unprepared when reality finally hit me. Here is how my epiphany came about: after doing some marketing, I spotted a penny on the ground as I was walking back to my car. Understand that for Great Depression babies such as myself (1929), this is a happening not to be trifled with.

After all, I grew up listening to my mother explain not less than ten times a day that: money does not grow on trees! And if at any time Mama caught me in some sort of financial profligacy, say, buying two sticks of gum (two cents) instead of one stick (one cent), she would back me into a rhetorical trap with, "You must think that money grows on trees? Is that what you think?"

All this flashed through my mind as I hovered over the penny glinting in the sun; Lincoln's profile winking at me like a Lorelei floating on a sea of black asphalt. I debated whether to put down my bundles and stoop over to pick up the coin and I knew - I just knew that somewhere, somehow - my mother was watching! So I stood there, frozen in time like a Greek statue.

A Good Samaritan passerby worried about my sudden fit of immobility stopped to ask if something was wrong. "No," I fibbed, "just trying to remember where I parked."

The Good Samaritan kept his eyes on me as I ambled over to my car. I feared the good gentleman would do something heroic like call 911 to come and get me if I doubled back for the coin, so I drove off. Yes, my friends the coin is probably still there even though I went back to the parking lot the next day, as I had promised myself (and in a way, my mother) that I would.

Ironically, I couldn't for the life of me, remember which aisle I was in when I spotted the coin. But that's a different story.�