penny passport.

A quick story before I fall over dead.

When I was in the sixth grade, I went on a weekend retreat with these girls from another school. I only knew one of them, the girl who was actually hosting the retreat in her family's cabin. The rest were strangers, but we all talked and gabbed as twelve-year old girls will do, and they pretty much accepted me quickly.

The vacation was to a lake outside of King's Mountain, NC, and we spent one afternoon in town at my friend's grandmother's store. There was a train track that ran right through the middle of the town. We decided that we would put pennies on the track when the train was about to come so that we could have flattened pennies.

So I know that it wasn't necessarily a good idea. Mama always told me that something miniscule, as small as say, a penny, on the track could derail a train. But she didn't tell me until after I got back from this trip when I told her this story. Besides, that story sounds like one of those stories some parent made up a long time ago for the child's own good. More likely, they just wanted us to stay away from train tracks.

But we didn't, or this would have been a much shorter story. All the other girls put pennies on the tracks. I say all the other because I didn't have a penny on me, so I didn't have one for the tracks. It seems doubtful that none of the five other girls there had an extra penny to give me, but none were offered. So I went without. I felt like the poor kid who has to wait outside the ice cream store.

Pennies in place, we stepped well away from the tracks (in case of derailment or projectile coins, I suppose) when the train came. After the last car flashed before us, we clambored up to the tracks to find the pennies.

Of course the pennies did not stay on the tracks. They fell off and into the rocks that surrounded the tracks. They were big rocks, and the pennies fell in between them. We had to pick the rocks up and dig to find our new treasures, and since we risked train derailment to make them, we were going to have them.

A couple of the girls never did find theirs. Their ice cream fell right off their cones.

And landed right in my hands.

As luck would have it, I found one. It wasn't one of theirs because it wasn't at all warm, like the freshly pressed ones were. It belonged to some long forgotten kid who also risked derailment who knows how long ago. I didn't offer it to one of the girls who couldn't find theirs. And you know what? I don't feel that bad about it.

I still have it. It marked the beginning of a flat penny collection I have going now. Doubtful though it may be, I still believe the derailment theory just enough to not put pennies on railroad tracks anymore. But there are flat penny machines all over the place, pretty much in every town that ever had a tourist. You put in fifty-one cents, sometimes pick a design, and out pops a fresh, warm, flat penny. I even have a little book with plastic slots to keep them all in. It says "Penny Passport" on the front. I'm not sure which countries accept those.

See? Aren't you glad I didn't listen to my mother?