A Penny for Your Thoughts

When I was younger (5 or 6) my mom took us to the park to fly kites. It was a beautiful sunny day and a perfect day to spend in the park. So we are playing around and doing kartwheels and such when I put my hand on the ground, and find something hard. I wonder what it is. I look for it in the grass untild I finally find what it is that my hand grazed.

"Mommy I found a LOONIE!!!"

I was soo excited, that I still remember it to this day (and we all know how good my memory is...blah). Why was I soo excited to find a loonie? These days a loonie wont even get you a coffee, but back then...a loonie could get you 100 PENNY CANDIES!!!

Penny candies were the best. It was all about quantity. For a loonie you could make yourself sick with sugar. Mini fuzzy peaches, and gummie worms and those little caramels you sometimes see at Halloween. When I was 5, these candies cost exactly one cent. You never threw out pennies back then because you could actually buy something with them.
So I begged mom to take us to the corner store, and that she did. At which point the store owner gives me a little paper bag, and I carefully count out exactly 100 candies to fill it with. I'm sure thinking back on it now (and being older then a kindergarden kid) that my mom probably had to pay the 15 cents tax or whatever, but I didn't notice. I was soo happy to be getting 100 candies that you could have told me my foot fell off, and I wouldn't have noticed.

Anyways, I thought about this last night while talking to Gemini. He'd never heard of penny candies. It also took me a while to explain what a dicky-dee was. Gosh I'm getting old...