What makes it lucky?

Like most of the sayings that you can recall in your head, you don't know where they came from, they are just there. For example..."Don't look a gift horse in the mouth" or "a watched pot never boils", but one that popped back in my mind today as I headed in from the spot where I park my car at work was; "Find a penny, pick it up, and the rest of the day you will have good luck."

I would suppose that this is one of those sayings that has been around for quite some time in the big scheme of things. I say that because it involves a penny...who would think today about a penny being the harbinger of "luck." Now days, for the saying to mean much it would probably have to say something like; "Find a $1.00, pick it up, and the rest of the day you will have...a dollar in your pocket." Now, I'm not against bending down to pick up a piece of money I find lying around, but chances are, if it is a penny, I'm the one that threw it down in the first place. I am well known in my little circle of one of tossing pennies haphazardly about to spread as much luck for others as I can.

Pennys have become about as useful in our monetary system as the proverbial "screen door on a submarine" or any other more colorful euphemisms you can think of. Try using a penny (or several of them) to pay for something today. Unless you put six of them together, buying a piece of gum is out. Forget about finding a "gumball machine" to take your pennies also. And that pretty much limits your commodities available with less than 10 cents worth of pennies. Watch the expression on the clerks face if you try to count out more than 10 to 20 cents worth of pennies to them. Now before any of you die-hard penny slot players remind me about the hours of joy you can have sitting in front of a one-armed bandit dropping in your pennies, just remember, I don't care.

Our government can argue legislation to give and take away just about anything in our society, but I would suspect the debate to do away with the penny would be one for the ages. But how much does it cost to administer the infrastructure to accommodate the penny? Couldn't that money be used instead to fund the NEA so they can give money to an "artist" who paints with poop?

Back to my original thought, of why should it be lucky to pick up a penny. It hasn't done much for me in my pocket when it was there to start with, so bending to pick it up and put one back in my pocket wouldn't carry much mystical powers of the all-powerful luck I think. Now a dime, that's a whooole different story.