I’m going to write about an old coin. Specifically one side of it. It’s an exercise I read about in a book. The idea that you could get a couple hundred words down about one side of a coin intrigued me. How do you do it? And how do you make it enjoyable?

I walk out into my kitchen. I have a jar of coins sitting on the shelf above my stove. It’s actually a honey pot— decoration.

So that’s the first thing I want to tell you about the coin. It’s been on the shelf— forgotten— because I don’t deal much in cash these days. Who does?

Right away, I empathize with the coin. I feel rather on-the-shelf myself.

I dig deep and pick out the dirty penny. I don’t really know why. I suppose the writer in me hopes there are some smudges I might be able to describe. I collect the penny and notebook and sit at my dining table.

The coin is smudged— tarnished, really. Its coppery gleam is gone, replaced by a splotchy, faint layer of grime. It’s not crusted, just sort of encoded. I tilt it just right, and a brilliant flash outlines the profile of old Abe Lincoln. This poor, old Abe has been scratched along his cheek, and if I tilt him just right, I can see the faint impression of a fingerprint. (Mine from when I picked him out of the jar?)

Our good old Abe sits in a ring of raised copper. A perfect ring that shines in the light.

That gleam sends me back. Years ago, when I was a bank teller, people would bring in vast jars of pennies, and we had a coin-counting machine. I still remember many Abes like this one spinning on the plate like a potter’s wheel. And all the shades of copper would whirl together like the spinning stars set on hyperdrive. I feel the ridges of Old Abe’s outline, and I can still hear the tinkle of the coins dropping into the bags— almost like the sound of glass breaking or raindrops opening into a torrent.

There’s a smudge on the coin right in front of Abe’s eyes. A dark little ghost. Or as if his gaze has somehow been captured by the portrait. His lapels are very dirty. I imagine him rubbing grubby fingers over them, which seems ridiculous. It’s certainly not how I’ve thought of Abe Lincoln before.

The grime highlights his profile just right, so I feel as if his shoulder will snap out of the relief and nudge me.

“What’d you keep me in there so long for?”

“Well, it’s not as if you buy much.”

Above Abe’s head, in the brightest area on the coin, hang the words “In God We Trust.” It’s as if all the hands that have touched this coin saved that spot. To look at? To read? To remember? I don’t know. The word “Liberty” sits just beneath the nape of Abe’s neck, but this one has been so busted about by fingerpads that I read it more by memory. Even squinting at it in the light, it looks like it says “LIBERPY.”

The date is fainter than the other two inscriptions, but I’ve found a coin that’s older than myself. Much older. 1975. It’s just a dull old penny, really. Nothing exciting. Nothing collectible. When you think about it, it’s not even really “worthy” in the true sense of the word.

Pennies don’t buy much these days.

I’m beginning to think this penny and I have much in common.

1975.

I wonder how many fingers have touched it. I wonder where it began its journey. The world was a very different place then.

That dark smudge— that shadow— all this particular Abe has seen. Maybe he’s been in the pockets of mighty men. Although if he spent much time around here, he probably skipped from pocket to register to teller box to pocket again. To car consoles. And maybe a couch or two.

Maybe it’s just because I worked for the credit union my grandfather was a part of, but I see a flash of it rattling on the dash of a gray and red striped Ford Ranger. A stickshift with a bench seat upfront and jump seats in the back. And if you sat in the middle up front, you practically had to crook your knee over the top of your sister’s knee so Grandpa could shift. And if you sat in the back, you could only see where you’d been rather than where you were going— and just barely, at that. But they called them jump seats, and that was cool because that’s where pilots sat.

Maybe this little penny was riding in a crevice somewhere to be picked up and cleaned out and sent on its way. Pocket to jar to teller box to purse to the grocery store and so and so— Until someday, it came to me, much the same way it came to everyone else. By transaction and time.

And although I can tell you exactly how it looks now, I can never honestly say where it’s been.

I don’t know if all this counts as writing about one side of a coin, but the instructions never said you couldn’t write a tale for it. And every story is almost as much about its author as its characters. And no character is built just by his looks. To give him flesh, you give him experience.

Sometimes, you give him a little rest, too, from his travels. In a honey pot. Above the stove, where he can feel warm from time to time.