Pennies

When I was a kid, I used to think how nice it would be if everything cost a penny. Bubble gum, shoes, a house. The field was leveled, and a penny was the price. I'd daydream about it on long rides in the back seat of my father's big old Chevy, watching for as many items as I could spot from the window that would all be priced so accordingly. I was probably five or six, just old enough to understand that a penny didn't go very far even though in the late 50's it went a little ways further than it does now.
But, that was when candy was sold from big jars on the candy store counter, and some of it was even two or three for a penny if you settled for the less favorite kind. In my childish mind I also thought that it would a good solution so adults would not have to worry about money as much as they seemed to.
I mentioned my theory to a slightly older friend of mine. She was 7 or 8, and, if you ask me now, probably lacked any child-like imagination straight from the womb. We were laying in the grass on a summer afternoon under the big tree that still shades my mother's front yard. She pursed her lips and scowled. "That wouldn't work at all," she told me. "How would you know who had more money than you did?"
I told her you could tell by who had more things. "But they'd all just cost a penny so how would you know whose things are better?" She went on to opine that then people would get paid in pennies, people would have to carry around big bags of pennies, and the world would run out of pennies.
"What about nickels and dollars?" I asked her.
“They still have to always make change in pennies because everything COSTS a penny…stupid. “ She replied. “And anyway, I’m going to be rich and not even use pennies. I won’t need them.” She finished.
Maybe I was a little socialist. Or maybe it was just penny-candy inspired thinking based on the fact that back then children never had many pennies of their own. It was a big deal to find one on the sidewalk, or one that had fallen out of your father's pocket and slid under the cushions of his favorite chair. Whatever it was, after my friend scoffed at my one cent daydream, I didn't play my wishful game again.
I lost track of her after grade school, but I bet she has lots of things that make her better. And I hope she reads this.