See a Penny, Pick It Up

"See a penny, pick it up; all day long you'll have good luck.  See a penny, let it lie; good luck will just pass you by."  Those are the words I remember learning as a child and I always pick it up - really.

But when we found this penny in the parking lot, I found out that Kate has learned it differently.  She looked at it first and then proclaimed, "yep, you can pick it up." -?- The way she has learned it is this: if you find a penny and it is heads up, you should pick it up.  If you find a penny and it is tails up, you should flip it over so that the next person to find it, will find it heads up and be able to keep it.

I like the new way better.  I like thinking that maybe someone else already found this penny but it was tails and they flipped it over for me to find.

Checking out at the grocery store today, my total came to 16.44.  I had four pennies in my wallet and no nickels.  I recently read an article about the cost of making new pennies - it costs $0.0241 to make one new penny.  So, there's a very real possibility that the government will stop making pennies.  Crazy or not, this makes me want to hang onto my pennies!  I stood in line thinking that I'd rather give the cashier a quarter and two dimes and get $0.06 back than to give her my last four pennies. (Obviously you don't want to get in line behind me at the grocery store.)