A miser.
"Find a penny, pick it up, all the day you’ll have good luck." It is as well-worn a cliché as any that rustle through my mind from childhood to this day.
When I spot a penny on the sidewalk or on the street that nursery rhyme-type jingle surfaces, followed now by trivia about the value of the penny, a drive to eliminate the penny, the image of the bucket filled with coins that I took to the bank so I could use it to buy a recliner chair.
It should be nothing new to use the penny as a metaphor for the trivial passages of life. The penny’s relative insignificance within the monetary system coupled with the busy-work of handling it characterizes many of life’s tasks that transcend the mundane and reach into emptiness.
The sole motivation for finding a penny and picking it up should be the harmless joy of imagining that it will bring some piece of luck. I do not believe in such things, and I let pennies sit on the ground for others to find.
Recently I spotted a large number of pennies on the street, glimmering by the curb. I guessed the pennies added up to about a dollar, based on unconsciously made calculations I make when I encounter an unexpected quantity of money. ("What’s it worth?")
Greediness arose. I recognize that greediness about myself. Unchecked it could lead me to crime and disappointment, but I know it well enough to see it for its puniness.
Greediness quelled I did not intend to scoop up the pennies, but I looked around the street for more money. Nickels, maybe. Dimes?
I thought this might be a trap set up by a gotcha reality television show, mining for material by setting people up to look desperate for a fistful of pennies.
On a bus ride from Florida to Texas I remember stopping at a gas station in a small town in Louisiana. I used a vending machine to buy something, and in so doing I dropped a couple of quarters on the floor. A man sitting nearby (just idling his days away, it appeared) tentatively reached for the coins. The quarters were several feet away from him and he would have had to stand up to get to them. I picked them up before the man’s gesture turned into action.
His movement was instinctual, and starved. He gravitated toward the coins like a magnet, like flies to dog shit. He even seemed ready to fight for it, for the 50¢.
