A study was published earlier this fall entitled, Money can buy me love: Gifts are a more effective form of acute social support than conversations.  One of my pals recently fell down a ravine in order to get out of a camping trip (just kidding, she didn’t want any of those things to happen), and all of her friends have been posting the nicest messages about healing fast and how strong and wonderful and outdoorsy she is, but the joke is on them because this study says that if I brought her a tub of cottage cheese on which I’d Sharpied, “Get well and stop mountain biking,” I’d win.  I’d be the best of the friends.

My mother has long known the secret to love and harmony is in small presents.  Some of her small presents have actually been very large gifts, like the time she spent two days gluing individual sequins onto a handsewn cape for my sister’s classmate who was having a tough time.  Other presents have been small in stature but big in meaning, such as when she got up at the crack of dawn to make challah so my little nephew could have warm bread, or when she filled a jar with strips of paper of all of the reasons why I was awesome (it was a pretty full jar, WINK WINK).

I am historically terrible with most presents.  Not on purpose, of course – a tub of cottage cheese always seems like a bang-up idea in the store.  Sometimes when I accidentally give a horrible gift I tell the recipient that my presence is a present, which is an excellent way to weed down your friends.

With that said, I am super-duper amazingly great at giving one gift to friends and strangers alike, and it’s thanks to my mother.  That gift is a lucky penny.

Growing up, my family would spend a weeklong summer vacation with my grandparents in a town called Edgartown on Martha’s Vineyard; and each morning my mom would alternate taking my sister or me to breakfast for a little mother-daughter bonding.  We’d eat our eggs, drink our orange juice, pay the bill, and then my mom would pull two pennies out of her wallet.  We’d walk down to the waterfront, our arms down at our sides, breezy as breezy can be.  When the moment felt right, we’d each drop our penny.

“Find a penny, pick it up, all day long, you’ll have good luck,” my mom would say when we reached the dock.

The most important part of the penny drop was the nonchalance because pennies and sidewalks do not quietly meet.  Edgartown was always filled with people; there was no way to drop a penny without a crowd.  If you dropped a penny on the ground with any level of flourish or panache – say, with a dramatic arm wave and a call, “Hello, world, have some luck, TA-DA!” someone would stop and pick up the penny with a “Excuse me, I think you dropped this.”

So, you had to be subtle.  Eyes forward, conversation light (walking next to a person without talking is a guaranteed method to get strangers to stare right at you), and never, ever turn back.  As we got older and went off to things like college, my mom branched our penny dropping to any time we were together. 

Then, as I got even older and had my own pennies, I started dropping them by myself.  I also added in a whisper of “Good luck” when I took it out of my wallet for a bit of panache and TA-DA, and also in case that penny had any plan to become a bad penny instead of a good one. 

Here’s something I’ve learned about pennies: they come back to you.  I bet I find nearly 50 pennies a year.  I found two pennies today, in fact.

“Any chance you’re picking up the same pennies you’ve dropped?”  You may be wondering.  No.  I mean, maybe, but not the vast majority of them.  My guess is that between my mom, sister, and me, we’ve dropped roughly 600 pennies.  I’ve found nearly 1,500.  I’ve never dropped them in Grand Forks (where I live) because I don’t need to – because whenever I find a penny, I give it away…and I find a lot of pennies in Grand Forks.  Two today, in case you missed it.

Like penny dropping, I have a technique to giving them away.  I say, “Look what I found,” and then I hand it to the recipient.  Then they say, “Oh, nice,” and try to give it back, and then I say, “Nope, it’s for you, it’s lucky.”  Then they keep it.  The end.

My boys are old enough now that I’ve brought them into the penny fold.  We’ve dropped them four times.  My thirteen-year-old is a champ; my nine-year-old drops it and then looks at me with wild-eyed excitement, so he still has much learning to do.

I hope one day you find one of my pennies.  Or one of my tubs of cottage cheese; those are probably lucky, too.

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The photo above is of my mom and sister taking a little roll around the pumpkin patch.

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This week on North Dakota Today we talked about Kelly Eickenbrock, my Nice Person of the Week, as well as the James River Valley Library System Local Author Fair. Check it out. (Valley News Live)

This is not good or nice news, but I have to put it on here.  One of the very first people I highlighted on North Dakota Today – Olivia Allen, a school girl who created a nonprofit called “Warm Blanket Hugs,” – has died.  Here is the feature on North Dakota Today, and here is an interview I did with her mother, Wendy. Olivia was a wonderful girl who has helped so many people; please send some prayers and peace to her mother. (Fargo Forum) (North Dakota Today) (North Dakota Nice)

So many people and so many communities are rallying around Enderlin’s Luke Wall, who was injured during a football game. (Fargo Forum)

Bismarck’s favorite skeleton is a busy guy. (KFYR TV)

Minoters donated 1,500 hand-carved pumpkins for a magical nighttime experience. (KFYR TV)

Tioga’s Jeffery Moe has a message of thanks to everyone helping him recover from the wildfires. (KFYR TV)

Congratulations to the five teachers inducted into the Grand Forks Teachers Hall of Fame! (Grand Forks Herald)

Bismarck’s Mavis Baranyk and Cleo Kersey have been best friends for almost 80 years. (KFYR TV)

Check out this performance of the Fargo-Moorhead Ballet’s Wizard of Oz. (North Dakota Today)

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