If my change could talk

I made my first trip to the new fast food restaurant in the BRF the other day: Culvers. I've always like Culvers, even knowing that it is ten times more likely to cause massive heart failure than a prison shank to the ventrical. I paid with cash (a rarity for me) and the cash register discharged my change down a plastic slide.

I immediately noticed that something was amiss when I didn't see the honest faces of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Rumsfeld staring at me from the change in my hand. Some son of a bitch loaded the register with Canadian change. Nevertheless, I decided not to make waves and shamefully left the Culvers with my American food and foreign change.

However today I took a closer look at the change and discovered one of the pennies was actually an American penny from 1941 with the wheat leaves on back. As I palmed the piece of copper with 67 years of decay, I couldn't help but think of all the hands it changed, and how the holders of this penny must have lived. I also wondered how many of the prior possessors of this coin washed their hands.

It really is amazing. This coin was probably minted before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Hell, it may have belonged to a soldier who used it to buy a soda at the drug store before reporting to basic. People were using this penny to pay for goods during the cold war, Watergate, the moon landing and the rise of the Bee Gees. It may have seen the insides of cash registers everywhere from the halls of Congress to NASCAR facilities in the South.

I have to wonder where else it will travel before succumbing to a heating bin at the Denver mint. In all likelihood, the penny will find its way to my change bin and eventually my bank. Will I be the last holder of all this history? It's pretty cool to ponder. Will someone else 67 years from now get this penny in their change and wonder if I saw the great chicken migration of 2011, the reign of Pope Ronald Mexico I, or the Presidency of Air Bud, and his son Air W. Bud?

The only story this penny won't tell is how it was once given in an act of benevolence to a homeless guy.