A Penny Found is a Breakfast Earned

Broke, working two jobs, and fresh out of undergraduate school, I had little time or money for going out to eat. Yet somehow in those years my younger brother, Bill, and I started meeting for breakfast on Sunday mornings. We’d eat a purposeful breakfast—the kind meant to fill you up, not to Instagram (not that there was such a thing back then). There were no garnishes, frills, or panache of any sort. Rather it was eggs, bacon, hash browns, and toast dripping with brushed-on butter. And coffee. Lots of coffee. Poured straight from the Bunn coffee maker and tamed with half and half from the tiny plastic cups that sat next to the jelly packets we raided for our toast. Those were the days I’d cross my fingers and pay by check after making a small tear along the bottom to slightly mar the account information, hoping that would necessitate manual processing at the bank and delay the debit until payday.

Sometime during those years, my brother and I made a pact that the first of us to find the next year’s newly minted penny would win a free breakfast from the other. Given our financial states, our agreement was that the winner be considerate of the type and size of the breakfast. Adding orange juice to the meal was an extravagance beyond the scope of the deal.

As was his luck, my brother found that first 1983 penny and I paid for breakfast.

With no deliberate intention, more than 30 years later our first-new-penny-of-the-year breakfast tradition continues. Some things have changed. I’m no longer tearing a hole in my check when paying for breakfast (paying by check?!), and ordering orange juice is no longer off limits. Yet some of the early rules remain in place. The penny can’t be given as a favor from someone who knows of our tradition. We have to come by the penny in a normal transaction; no digging in the need-a-penny-take-a-penny jar at the cash register. Between us, my brother and I have found our newly minted pennies at coffee shops, restaurants, a dry cleaner’s shop, the Atlanta airport, the Chicago Aquarium, the Science Museum of Minnesota, an art gallery, and other obscure and everyday locations.

2018 is our 35th year of penny breakfasts. Why do we keep this up? Maybe it’s because we both know that without it we might not make the effort to see each other, one on one, at least once each year. Or maybe it’s because we simply can’t imagine not doing it.

While he may have had beginner’s luck, I’m ahead, having won at least five more times than my brother. As is typical, we are already being asked by family and friends who has found the 2018 penny. No winner yet. Until it’s found, I’ll be paying by cash more than by credit card. I need to produce the change I need for penny finding. I have a breakfast to win.