Ranking right up there with the myths about Santa Claus and the tooth fairy is the legend that pennies fall from heaven. This can’t be true, a priori, because God wouldn’t save pennies – nobody does! I know this for a fact because every weekend when Sue and I walk the neighborhood there is a fresh supply just waiting to be picked up on the blacktop. Here a penny, there a penny, everywhere a penny penny. Perhaps, I figure, it rained copper last night instead of H2O but no, they’re just on the street, lying there like a bunch of cigarette butts that someone obviously didn’t want to bother with. I will. As a matter of fact Sue and I compete for them. “Just think,” she said after beating me to the first on a three penny walk the other day, “there might be twenty or thirty thousand of these just lying around the street in this country right now. Think of all the good luck someone could be having.” And that of course is why someone should believe in pennies instead of the tooth fairy. They bring good luck: more than horseshoes, four-leaf clovers, or even betting on birthdates when you’re playing Lotto. Very, very lucky!
There’s a theory that your luck depends on whether the penny is found heads or tails up. I’ve never been able to actually correlate that statistically. The competition is so fierce between Sue and I that the position of the penny goes unobserved as we push each other out of the way to be the official finder and therefore dispenser of the day’s good luck. When Sue gets there first she rather smugly hands the penny to me for safe keeping – her shorts having no pockets and all. I accept it reluctantly, all the while scouring the area for what might have been a “shower” of copperheads from some nonbeliever the night before.
This brings up an interesting question. If someone throws away a penny, is it bad luck? I’m not sure but I’m not risking it in any case. Those “Give a Penny, Take a Penny” containers near your local merchant’s cash register should be totally avoided. Giving a penny comes so close to throwing away a penny on the street that it ranks right up there with black cats, cracked mirrors and walking under ladders. In addition to pennies, I have advice on nickels, dimes and quarters that you might find lying along the road. Don’t touch ‘em. First and foremost, they don’t bring you any luck, and second of all they have billions of germs all over them. I’ve never been keen on cooties in any form or fashion. I might risk it for pennies, but I’m not about to pick up quarters no matter how profitable. Besides, how could any of you think that silver coated coins would be lying in the street in the first place? According to the efficient market theory, someone must already have picked them up. Find and save pennies. Very…very lucky!
http://www.pimco.com…rom-Heaven.aspx
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