The Day a Penny Changed My Life
By: Casey Harding-Brown
One day, on Pearl St in Boulder Colorado, I was rushing (late as per my usual fashion) to get to a guitar lesson. I parked in my usual lot where there were always spots if you were willing to pay. I started collecting all the change from my cup holder, floor mat, purse, and anywhere my ADHD self had once been distracted by something shiny.
I got out of the car, feeling the extremely strong Colorado sun beating on my super-sized forehead as I walked to the meter. I started transferring the collection of coins from my hand to the meter but when I put a penny in the machine it spit it back out. I tried again because let’s just say city appliances aren’t always in top-notch condition.
When it spit it out again I spotted a sign on the parking meter (that I had somehow never read before in my two and half years of parking in Boulder) stating what types of payments it accepted. Credit/Debit cards and a list of every coin besides 1 cent. I was irrationally mad. Probably because I was late and feeling like I was having a hot flash like always-I’ve decided I either have early onset menopause or it’s just my fiery red hair- but I was PISSED at this penny.
It’s one of the coins I had already deemed kind of useless and was excited for the chance to get rid of it. I threw the penny on the ground thinking “Seriously? You can’t even use a penny to pay for parking? What a worthless coin.”
Then I had a moment. First I was slightly concerned about being legitimately angry at a penny. I was like, “Damn, I need to chill.” Second I realized my attitude towards pennies was the same attitude so many people had about humans as individuals. What if I had five pennies? I could trade those for a nickel and use that for parking. What if I had 1,000 pennies? That’d be almost enough to buy me a chipotle burrito bowl (with guac). 10,000 pennies and I could buy the keg for our next party. Which, I would never do because I prefer hard alcohol over beer any day but you get the point.
How many times has someone thought to themselves, “I’m just one person, I can’t make a difference” or “It doesn’t matter if I do this one thing (good or bad) because it’s just me and ONE person doing ONE thing doesn’t change anything”? I myself had had some of these very same thoughts. I know for a fact one person can change the world, or at the very least make an impact on it. I’ve read about it in history books and I’ve seen it right before my eyes. From MLK to Brittney Spears.
One person can inspire and influence others to come together and when we come together, that’s when the magic happens. So why? Why did I ever have this doubt in myself or others that one of us couldn’t be the next person to change the world. I realized this was so much bigger than the penny on the ground. It was a metaphor for life. I flipped the penny over so it was facing heads up, in the hopes that the person to find it would be happy to find a lucky penny (and not think, “Why would I pick up a penny? You can’t even use it to pay for parking”) and I strutted off, guitar in hand, ready to be the girl who inspired the world (or at the very least, myself).
Special shout out to all the pennies and individual humans in the world.
