A Penny and an Afternoon Adventure

The Boston Herlad

On a cold November day, a penny, a car, and a tankful of gas took my grandson and me on an adventure.

'It's a game Mom and I played once," my grandson tells me. "This is what you do. You toss a penny and if it lands heads up, you take a right, and if it lands heads down, you take a left.”

I ask him if he's read "The Penny Walk," a short story in a Christmas book I've had since I was a child. A little girl has just one penny to spend on a Christmas present for her brother, and since a penny can't buy anything, she uses it to lead her on a great adventure. She flips the coin and — heads, she walks right; tails, she turns left.

But my grandson doesn't know the story. "Besides," he says, 'We didn't do this when we were walking, Meem. We did it when Mom was driving. It was one of the best days of my life.”

Adam is 9 and he's had a lot of "best days." You ask him, and he rattles them off. "What's been your worst day?" And he shrugs. That's Adam.

But I think it is too late in the day to go driving around. "It's 4 o'clock and it's a school night and you have homework, Adam," I say. He does the math. "If we get back by 6:30, I'll have lots of time to do my homework. And if we leave right now, we'll have a whole 2½ hours to explore.”

I dig a penny out of my coat packet, hand it to him, and grab the keys to the car.

After we get gas, the game begins. Adam flips the penny onto the car floor and it's heads up, so we turn right, Adam explaining that part of the adventure is to notice all the things we're driving past and to stop at places that look interesting.

We pass the high school, not interesting; a funeral home, not interesting. He tosses the penny again and at the next light we take a right. Then it's left, right, left, like a march for a while, the two of us driving past gas stations and restaurants. We pass a Honey Dew, but it's too late in the day for coffee and donuts, and we pass a pub, too, but Adam's too young for wine.

It's gas stations we see and car dealerships. Miles of them. And one lone house decorated for Christmas. And then? Then we are cheering because we are on the road to Acapulco's, Adam's favorite restaurant, and there's no taking a left or a right before it. So we pull into the parking lot, because Acapulco's is interesting, and decide to have an early dinner.

Adam says when his fajitas arrive: "Isn't this cool, Mimi? The penny took us here.” After dinner, the penny takes us to Walpole Mall. I would admit to rigging this if I had. But I didn't. The coin said left and we made a U-turn; then right where we could only go straight. Then left again and there we were at yet another of Adam's favorite places.

There is a game arcade at Walpole Mall. For a handful of quarters, a kid can play Skee ball and try his luck at the claw machine and not win anything, but always come away with a few pieces of candy.

We headed there. Thirteen quarters later, we headed home, Adam a winner, the 500-plus tickets that poured out of the games he played traded in for two tiny dolls, Christmas presents for his sisters.

Typically we would have stayed home and done homework and then played Monopoly on a cold November night. And this would have been fun. But the penny took us on an adventure. We were home by 6:45. Adam did his homework, went to bed, and in the morning I drove him to school.

He took the penny with him.