A Penny's Worth
Horace came into the world at 10.52 a.m. on a Wednesday morning in 1990.
“Horace Hogpenny, Esquire,” he murmured to himself — and the Bermuda Monetary Authority exploded into laughter.
Horace ignored the crude cackling. He was a Hogpenny and he knew his own worth. He was shiny and clean; his copper coating gleamed in the light; his engraved hog had just the right expression. Yes, he was a special penny all right — and he was destined for great things!
Horace was the top of his coin roll at the Monetary Authority and he was the first penny in the bank cashier’s till. He enjoyed life at the Bank for a while, moving along the teller line, dipping in and out of tills to balance the day’s accounts, but soon boredom set in. Horace wanted adventure! He wanted excitement and finally it happened.
Horace found himself in position for a withdrawal and was handed out as change to a large portly man in a grey suit. He rode out of the bank in a back trouser pocket, ecstatic with excitement. He was about to realise his destiny!
It didn’t take Horace long to discover that a penny has no destiny. A penny is a nuisance, weighing down pockets and purses; a penny is easily dropped, easily forgotten, easily lost. A penny, in fact, can very quickly end up on the street — and that’s where Horace soon found himself.
Oh, at first it was an amusing adventure.
“Horace Hogpenny, Brave Explorer! Horace Hogpenny, Wilderness Camper! Horace Hogpenny, Commando Penny,” he would cry, striking a pose in the crack on the sidewalk.
But — time has a habit of passing and what may seem like a great adventure quickly palls. And so it was with Horace. Through no fault of his own he became dirtier and dirtier. His gleaming copper coating was dull and scratched and the expression on his engraved hog grew miserable.
One day, Horace faced the facts squarely. He, Horace Hogpenny, was — a homeless penny, a street penny.
“Horace Hogpenny, Worthless Cent,” he thought gloomily. He snuffled self-pityingly in the crack on the sidewalk, turned his face to the concrete and went to sleep.
Seasons passed and Horace slept through the heat and dust of Bermuda’s summers, the wind and rain of the winters. He was a worthless penny and nobody noticed him until —
“Look, Grandpa! It’s a penny!”
The voice jarred Horace awake. Disoriented and dusty, he stared around and recoiled in horror as an enormous face loomed over him.
“A penny!” boomed the voice again and five huge pudgy fingers scrabbled over Horace’s surface.
Horace fainted.
When he came to he was clutched in a sweaty hand, swinging backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards— Horace felt sick and scared. Where was he going? What was going to happen to him?
“Aaaah!” he screeched as the hand opened up and dropped him.
Down, down, down Horace fell — and landed on a pile of coins.
“Ow!” “Watch it!” “Stop jumping around up there!” A cacophony of voices broke out as the coins shifted and grumbled, jarring Horace as he scrambled to keep his balance.
“Wh — where am I?” he gasped, looking around wildly.
A dime rolled its Easter lily eye in disgust. “In the peanut butter jar of course! Don’t you know anything? Where have you been — on the streets or something?”
The other coins laughed raucously.
Horace blushed and huddled into himself as the dime turned away contemptuously. Humiliated and near to tears the penny huddled alone on the pile of coins, trying to ignore the sneering voices around him.
“Hello,” a voice whispered shyly.
Startled, Horace shifted and looked down. A little hogpenny smiled up at him.
“H — hello,” Horace quavered. He plucked up his courage. “Wh — what’s a peanut butter jar please?”
“It’s where all the coins go until the time to go to the Bank,” the penny explained. “Once a year Laura and Grandpa empty the jar, sort out all us coins, wrap us and take us to the Bank. You’ve come at the right time. Wrapping takes place tomorrow!”
Excitement rose in Horace as he stared out of the jar. The Bank! He could go back to the Bank! He could become a penny of worth again. Horace Hogpenny, Bank Penny.
The next morning the peanut butter jar was in a ferment of anticipation.
“It’s Wrapping Day,” the coins jangled excitedly. “Wrapping Day!”
The jar tipped and Horace struggled to keep his balance. In a stream of silver, gold and copper the coins tumbled onto the floor, rolling around in delight.
“So many, Grandpa!” crowed a child’s voice and pudgy fingers came down among the coins, spilling them around.
“There>are lots of them this year, aren’t there, Laura? Let’s start wrapping.”
Horace had rolled away from the main pile of coins and now he watched in growing excitement as first the dollars were sorted, then the quarters, the dimes and the nickels.
Finally it was time for the pennies.
“Ninety-nine, one hundred,” Laura chanted as she shoved the final penny in the wrapper and set it to the side. She frowned. “Not many left now, Grandpa.”
“I think there are enough for one more wrapper,” Grandpa smiled.
Horace looked around in a panic. There were hardly any pennies left. He edged closer to the pile.
“Pick me, pick me,” he begged.
“Ninety-seven, ninety-eight—”
Horace wriggled frantically. “Me!” he cried. “Pick me!”
“One hundred!”
“No!” Horace couldn’t believe it. He had to get back to the Bank. He had to! He wanted to be worth something again!
“Look Grandpa. There’s no room for this one.”
Horace wailed in despair as he was finally picked up — and dropped into the now empty jar.
Grandpa picked up the jar and put it back on the shelf, looking at it thoughtfully. All alone, Horace stared back numbly, defeated.
“No room —” Grandpa mused. “No room —” He looked at Horace again and smiled suddenly. “You know, little fellow, I think I have a job for you.”
On Christmas Eve, Pastor Tim Anderson started his sermon by holding up a penny. It was an ordinary penny, a rather battered and worn penny. Horace blinked sheepishly at the congregation.
“My grand-daughter and I wrapped our Christmas change this week,” Pastor Tim began, “as we do every year during Advent. This year, for the first time ever, we managed to wrap every coin — except for one. There was no room for this penny. I looked at this penny that Laura found on the street, lost and abandoned in a crack on the sidewalk; this dirty, battered and forgotten penny; this penny for which there was no room in the wrapper, and I found my Christmas message.
“We celebrate the birth of Jesus at this wondrous time of year, the birth of the baby who was heralded by angels, the baby to whom three kings brought gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh.
“We sing hymns about shepherds and their flocks and the little town of Bethlehem and we light our candles to signify the light that was given to the world at Christmas.
“But always, as we celebrate, we remember that God chose to send his Son, not as a mighty king but as a humble baby - a baby for whom there was no room — and in the wood of the manger we see the eventual wood of the cross. And we remember that for love of us, our Lord grew up to be despised and rejected, abandoned and, finally, killed.”
Pastor Tim held Horace up again. “Which penny is worth more? The newly minted, shiny one or the one that has lain in the street for years? Both, of course, are worth the same. And so it is with our Lord. The angel-adored baby of that glorious golden first Christmas and the poor, Galilean carpenter who was betrayed, abandoned and left to suffer alone, are two sides of God’s inestimable love for us and, as such, above all worth.
“There was no room long ago for that heaven-sent baby; there were no friends by the side of the man who was crucified and yet God’s love for us never faltered. May we, this Christmas, see both the face of the baby and the face of the crucified in the people around us — and may we recognise the equal worth of both.”
The service continued and Horace listened in wonder to the beautiful hymns that told the story of that first Christmas. As the church slowly dimmed, and the midnight candles were lit, he twisted on the pulpit to stare at the Nativity scene beneath the cross.
The baby in the manger seemed to smile up at him and, as the music oI>Silent Night<$> filled the church, the flame on the pastor’s candle flickered over the humble penny, turning it as warm and bright as on the day it was minted.
