One of the things my kids love the most about visiting our local zoo is the coin press machine that allows them to stretch a penny and have a tiger, or elephant, or gorilla stamped into it. I think we have over a dozen of those coins floating around our house.
When they see a penny machine at the zoo, or museum, or store, they run up to it as though it was a long lost friend. “Can we have money?” they cry in unison, holding out their hands expectantly. And who are we to refuse? For a reasonable amount of money (a quarter each? 50 cents?) they each get to turn the crank and watch the penny get stretched, and then hold their pennies in their hands all day and just LOVE on them.
What’s funny is that when we get home from whatever place we visited, the penny is quickly lost – that’s what pennies do, right? But every now and again we’ll open a draw, or clean a shelf in one of their rooms, or check a pocket before doing laundry – and there it will be. That coin, the one from the day we went to the zoo and the monkeys howled, or the day we went to the museum and saw the old dinosaur bones. And you know from seeing that penny that you’ve made a lovely memory.