Tag: pennies

March 7th, 2025

Journal Writing

March 7th, 2025

Indiana Jones and the Penny of Doom

My girlfriend and I went to the bookstore on Sunday. Because, despite what you’re reading here, I’m actually an avid reader. After making our selections, we went up to the counter to pay. The total came to exactly $20.01.

I’ve heard of “a penny for your thoughts”, but never “a penny for other people’s thoughts”—you know, in written form. I reached into my pocket and came up with nothing but lint balls.

That’s one of life’s little mysteries: how lint always finds its way into your pockets. It’s so common it should almost be a form of currency. Think about it—no more worrying about correct change for tolls when you have an endless supply of pocket lint to pay with. “That’ll be $3.50.” Here’s two nickels and a tuft of blue fuzz. Keep the change.”

Turns out, lint still isn’t recognized as a form of payment yet, so I had to ask my girlfriend if she had a penny.

And that’s when our simple bookstore trip turned into a full-scale archaeological excavation.

She began to dig through her purse literally, pulling a shovel out of it to help with the process. Frankly, I wouldn’t have been surprised if Indiana Jones himself showed up, believing the Holy Grail was buried in there. Or worse… his lesser known, significantly less thrilling brother, Ohio Jones.

Ohio Jones isn’t an adventurer like his brother. He’s a very niche scientist, a world-renowned expert in purse anthropology—a man dedicated to studying the ancient artifacts, lost civilizations, and assorted gum wrappers buried within the depths of handbags. Some say he once uncovered a long-lost TV remote in a purse—no one knows how it got there, especially since the owner didn’t even own that brand of TV. And legend has it he’s still searching for a purse that doesn’t contain at least one crumbling granola bar.

And judging by the ever-growing pile of debris emerging from my girlfriend’s purse, he would have considered this a career-defining discovery.

I braced myself. What horrors lurked within?

  • A single bowling shoe (but no sign of the other one).
  • Last weekend’s leftover gyros (somehow still warm, and yet, completely inedible).
  • Rocco, our pet rock, looking strangely unfazed by the chaos.
  • A snow globe that, when shaken, inexplicably made it start snowing outside.
  • A fully functional Etch A Sketch displaying a suspiciously accurate self-portrait of my girlfriend—who hadn’t touched it.

Anything but a penny. Not even a single piece of pocket lint.

At this point, the cashier looked visibly annoyed, and a line had started forming behind us. That’s when I tried bartering.

“What about a mint?” I asked. “Pennies are technically minted after all.”

The cashier stared at me like I was mintally unstable while my girlfriend, now knee-deep in her purse, seemed to have vanished.

That’s when things got truly unsettling.

Her purse just sat there, untouched. As if it had swallowed her whole.

I’d heard of The Portable Door, but never The Portable Purse—though, technically, all purses are portable. Just not in the sense that you can step into them and instantly teleport anywhere in the world.

Are you thinking what I’m thinking?

If you’re thinking, “This all sounds far-fetched,” then clearly, you’ve never seen a franchise milked for all it’s worth. Because I was thinking “sequel”—as in The Portable Purse, the completely unnecessary follow-up to The Portable Door.

Unless you were the cashier or the increasingly impatient guy behind us—then this is absolutely what happened.

Just as I was about to launch a full-scale search and rescue mission, my girlfriend suddenly rematerialized out of thin air.

The cashier, too weirded out to care anymore, just waved us off. “It’s fine.”

On my way out, I placed a half-sucked mint covered in pocket lint in the Take-a-Penny, Leave-a-Penny tray. Because I didn’t want anyone else to have to go through what we did.

Turns out, I had a penny in my pocket the whole time—but obviously, I couldn’t waste it. I needed exact change for the toll on the way to pick up Indiana’s stepsister, Illinois Jones. Besides, how else could I afford my penny wedding and special guest pennywhistle performance by Pennywise?

Some might call it The Penny of Doom, but I just call it budgeting.

I should also, at the very least, have some Pennyroyal Teas on hand for the occasion—it’s only proper.

But that’s a story for another anecdote. Or franchise.

May 4th, 2024

Journal Writing

May 4th, 2024

Pennyroyal Teas

Why does everything cost a pretty penny? Why can’t it cost an ugly penny instead? I have no shortage of those. There’s also a certain comicality to the fact that Abraham Lincoln, one of our most uncomely presidents, has his visage minted on the coin. Let’s face it, while he was a great man, he wasn’t the greatest-looking one. Once, when accused of being two-faced, Abraham Lincoln humorously retorted, “If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?” Given his appearance, we should be thankful that a coin only has one head. He looked poorly, and maybe that’s why a penny is only worth one cent, and anybody with only pennies to their name is bound to also be poor. Another example of an ugly penny is that clown from IT, Pennywise. Even with all that makeup on, IT was still hideous.

All I know is whether it’s a pretty penny or an ugly one, I don’t want to resort to having a penny wedding. I also do not want to be so broke and penniless that I only have enough to pay someone to play the “Wedding March” on just a penny whistle. It would be just my luck that someone would also be Pennywise. Also, I’d like to buy my wife a house someday, maybe somewhere on “Penny Lane,” which “is in my ears and in my eyes,” just not in my pockets. I should have thrown more pennies into an actual wishing well instead of the sewer drain outside my house where Pennywise might live. If only people gave me a penny for my thoughts, I might have more than just my two cents.