A Penny For Your Thoughts Shannon Glasgow, ACB ALB
One day this past summer when I was back home in the US. I took off my tennis shoes and threw them on the floor next to my black work shoes. As they hit the carpet, there was a slight clinking sound. Of course, I knew why there was a sound like this coming from my shoes, but I didn’t know why there should be a clinking sound in the first place. Do you have any habits or rituals that you routinely do without questioning them? For me, whenever I find a coin, I put it in my shoe. I don’t ask questions. I just do it. Slip it right in the top of my shoe and then wiggle my foot a bit so that the coin reaches a comfortable position. Usually it’s a copper penny, but this summer I also found a quarter, which is worth slightly less than one UAE dirham. I was wearing my black work shoes when I found that treasure, so that’s where it is until now.
So why the clinking sound? You see, those coins usually stay in my shoes a while. Maybe weeks. Perhaps months. And since I often look down when I walk in parking lots, where most of these beauties have been left for people like me to find, my eyes tend to focus like a hawk. That means one penny is often joined by another. This summer, I found more than 12 pennies, so you can imagine the clinking sound when the shoe hit the floor and turned over. If we were having face to face meetings now and a fellow Toastmaster said he / she didn’t believe I put coins in my shoe, I would proudly show them (provided I was sure I didn’t have any holes in my socks) the evidence. Now, each of my tennis shoes is down to one penny each, while only my right work shoe has a quarter. Where did the coins go? No, I wasn’t at a check out counter at a store, discovering that I was short of change in my pocket.
“Excuse me, ma’am. I think I’ve got a few extra cents in my left shoe.” I don’t think that would go over very well. I usually reach a point where I tell some of the coins; “Right, you’ve been in there long enough. Out you come back to civilization”, and I put the coin with the other spendable pieces of metal. But not all of them. Some lucky ones usually get to travel kilometers and kilometers in the sole of my shoes for days or months.
“Just because a behavior isn’t logical doesn’t mean you shouldn’t continue doing it” 11
