In 2021, an estimated 281,550 new cases of invasive breast cancer will be diagnosed in women in the U.S. as well as 49,290 new cases of non-invasive (in situ) breast cancer.
A flash from the ground caught my eye as I trundled the street. Metal winked at me after I had stepped from the sidewalk and into the bike lane to allow more room for the passage of another traveler. The sun had glanced from a coin, and I bent to retrieve a dime. I pocketed it and continued.
I have probably walked past seven thousand, two hundred sixty pennies along my steps; I’ve bent to retrieve none of them. In these pandemic days, I am hesitant to hug or shake a hand, so rooting out pennies from the dirt has not been attractive to me. But in recent days, for reasons unclear to me, I have changed my view of “street money.” It started when I saw a quarter on the ground and decided that the amount was too great to ignore. After that acquisition, I added dimes and nickels to the coins I would grub from the streets, but still eschewed the stoop for the penny. A friend’s post on a social media site noted that she had been harvesting “lucky pennies” from sidewalks and parking lots for a week, and on one day found a dime and 7 of those pennies. She also pointed out that there was a coin shortage, something about which small retailers, especially, have been concerned. I must confess that I may have contributed to that coin shortage.
When I get change from a purchase, I separate the coins into three categories: quarters, pennies, and nickels/dimes. I place the coins in cups and bowls and when I have an appropriate accumulation, will roll the change into paper sleeves, and go to the bank to exchange the metal for paper. But for a long time, I have collected the coins but neither rolled nor returned them to the bank. I have a mound of pennies, and a great pile of dimes and nickels. The quarters get dropped into IndyGo bus boxes, or the occasional pool table. I would sometimes gather three quarters, two dimes, one nickel and four pennies to put into my pocket to mingle with the paper so that I might tender exact change when paying cash for my purchases. But I’ve not done that for some time, so there is a coin shortage.
My friend’s social media post suggested that “the Feds” should pay for the collecting of coins dropped in parking lots, but I doubt that the bill, once introduced, would pass. Still, I mused on the possibility, and imagined the market that would be created, and the administrative problems inherent in a coin bounty. For instance, considering the coin shortage, any bounty paid would have to be in whole dollar amounts; change culled from the gravel must be equal to one or more paper dollars, with the bounty to be paid in paper. If I turn in coins worth two dollars, how much will I earn? It would defeat the purpose of allaying the coin shortage if I were to be paid in an amount that required the dispensing of those precious few coins.
In any case, I’ve decided that my laziness cannot stand; I must consider the greater good of society. It is imperative that I turn in my coins for cash. My broken change sorting machine notwithstanding, I can still count out my pennies, dimes and nickels and place them into wrappers to be taken to the bank to be exchanged for paper. But a governmental “coin bounty” notwithstanding, I have changed my attitude toward collecting “road coin,” and will be more amenable to the idea of diving for dimes.
cjon3acd@att.net