SEE A PENNY

This morning the angle of the sun sent a glint across a penny in the street.  For once I wasn’t behind schedule on my walk to work so I picked it up.  Two blocks later I came to a crossing where traffic almost never slows down for pedestrians, since it’s a more of a curve than an intersection.  The car at my left stopped at the stop sign, then, I guess, the driver assumed traffic would stop for me and proceeded.  But the car coming around the curve didn’t stop.   That driver sounded her horn at the other car while nearly hitting it broadside.  I just waited on the side of the street until they were both gone, fingering the penny in my pocket.

The last intersection is a busy one with a pedestrian crossing signal.  Even when the light is in my favor I keep in mind that having the right of way is no guarantee I will make it across unharmed. 

 The light changed, the twenty second countdown began.  I waited on the sidewalk for a little old man and his wife in a pickup truck who turned right across my path without even glancing my way.  I made it halfway across the street when a car with a driver on her cell phone came from the other direction, turned left, and would have flattened me except I saw her coming and stopped.  She finally saw me, mouthed an “OMG!” waved with her cell and went on down the street.  My twenty seconds were almost up.  I made it safely across.  But before I stepped up on the curb I saw another penny and picked it up.  I was going to need all the luck I could get the way things were going.

 If you don't put in your two cents, how can you get change?