Like a Penny

         I am not sure when it began. Somewhere a long time ago I got some coin books and apparently from time to time, I would put pennies in those books.  I did not give much attention to the penny collection for a long time. Then one day when my younger son and I were joking about the fact that he and his brother would have to clean out and dispose of all the stuff my wife and I had collected.  He responded that what he was looking forward to getting his hands on was my penny collection. Who knew?
          Since that time, in my retirement time, I have become much more regular in my searching for pennies.  Pennies minted in San Francisco seem to have stayed on the west coast.  After 1940 the only pennies I am still searching for are "s" pennies. That is the state of my collecting.
          Still the daily examination of another fifty pennies, (I look through one roll of pennies each day), constantly is a reminder of the great need for us to be kind to each other. Nobody knows the kind of life we have had to endure. "Nobody knows the trouble I've seen" are words from an old song, but they are the message I get each day from the pennies.
           I spread out the pennies and it is amazing the vast range of conditions of the pennies. It is not necessarily related to the age of the pennies. I have found pennies minted in 2010 that look like they have been hit with hammers.  There are pennies from the 1970's that look like they have been soaked in acid.  There are pennies from the 1960's that look brand new.  Every time I look at a penny the thought comes that this penny has a story to tell. Where it has been? What it has been used for; what it has had to suffer. Who knows how many times it has been put through a washing?  Who knows the kind of treatment that has been given to this penny. Was it put in a box and left, ignored?  But each of those coins is still a penny. Still worth one cent.
           If pennies are each subjected to a great variety of stories, so too are human lives and each person has different experiences, different pains, different opportunities, and different abilities.  If I could constantly remember that I would be a whole lots less eager to jump to judgments about another person. If I could remember my penny lessons, I would remember that despite all the varieties of people they are each a person and still worthy