What Finding Ten Cents Taught Me About America

It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon just after the heat wave had finally broken, so it wasn’t as if the metal was so hot that touching it would burn your fingers. And it wasn’t the sort of New York neighborhood where folks come up with creative ways to entrap and kill people. We were in midtown.

So I really didn’t know why ten pennies were staring up at me.

I was just about to round the corner when I saw the pennies. Quite a few of them, and while there was a man on the same corner standing around, he wasn’t doing it in such a way as to suggest that they were his pennies and not to be touched.

I got down on one knee and picked up each penny. Ten in all, a curious number; no one drops a round number of objects at random. Were they placed on purpose? Placed for me, swiftly snatching up the coins lest someone else come and horn in on my looting? But no one seemed to want my treasure. The aforementioned guy just kinda looked at me. His sunglasses masked his expression but I don’t think he was looking with contempt or curiosity or admiration or anything. Just looking.

Why was I the first person in all of midtown Manhattan to get down and pick up ten free cents? Surely other people saw them. Were they afraid of a trap, being filmed for some unscrupulous video prank of some poor sap picking up coins and being kicked in the posterior? Were they bypassing the change out of respect, that it might be some bum’s secret stash? Or were they recollecting “The Legend of Zelda” and our video game hero’s talent for finding round numbers of rupees on lawns and under pots, and deciding that this money was earmarked for a true warrior?

I believe none of the above. I believe that people are just too proud to pick up change in public. Especially the lowly penny. Well, we knew that already. A USA Today poll of July 7, 2006 shows that only 76% of respondents stop to pick up pennies, and frankly I don’t believe that lofty figure.