Floss religiously

Rolling Pennies

I've sorted, counted, stacked and rolled my last penny.

Growing up, Mom would collect pennies in a big metal and cardboard tube (I think it was a pink bunny), and she, Paul, and I would sort and count them.

Neither Paul, nor I particularly liked sorting and counting things, but Mom bribed us. If we found a coin with our birthyear on it, we were allowed to keep it as our own. So we sorted pennies from dimes and nickels, and stacked them in groups of 10. Mom would stuff our stacks of 10 down into the brown paper in groups of 50. The way I remember it, we must have rolled tens of thousands of pennies. In all reality, it was probably about $40 worth of pennies, nickels, and dimes.

What we didn't know is that Mom was making us roll coins so we could start our first savings accounts at the credit union. We each started with the minimum of about $25, and she encouraged us to take whatever money we could save and deposit it into our accounts.

A few years later, Papa made me spend some spare time rolling coins with him. He said it was so we could afford to pay the grocery bill because I ate too much.

Coin counting remained a staple well until my hears at Harding. During my freshman year, I learned to stack quarters and dimes neatly on the desk so the pizza guy could count all $7.56 plus a $2 tip quickly. After feeling too guilty about paying the pizza delivery guy with coins, I started collecting my coins in a plastic cup.

I collected them until my senior year, when I sorted, stacked, and packed them neatly into their paper rolls. I took them down to the bank, and they said, "oh honey, we don't do that any more. Break them out of the rolls and pour those coins into this bucket. We have a machine over there that does all that for you."

So I broke all of my hard work apart, poured the coins into the bucket, and let the machine do what took me about 4 hours in 30 to 40 seconds--it was $78 and change.

I use a smaller cup now, and I filled it up over the past year. So I took it to the credit union, asked a customer service rep to show me how to use the machine, and poured my coins into the hole on top. It ate my coins and rewarded me with a receipt.

Somehow I miss sitting at the kitchen table, sorting pennies and nickels, checking the dates, and marveling at how anything from the 60's could still be useful today.