Uht-oh. I don't think we've gotten to zero. Hopefully it isn't dinner time where you are.
-Add a penny to a nickel to get the sales tax paid when I buy a single item at the dollar store in the town southwest of mine. (I need to have two pennies with the nickel in my own town.)
-Throw handfuls of them to the crowd of spectators at a parade.
-Superglue a penny over the spring-loaded latch on the cabinet that I do not want to close with a catch.
-Mix them into the grab bag of Halloween candy for trick or treators on Oct. 31.
-Nail through one when you need to spread the holding force of the nailhead over a greater area.
-Spin one on the table for entertainment while waiting for your slow order at Denny's.
-Toss one into the deep end of the pool and challenge the kids to dive and bring it up.
-Drill a hole through opposite edges of many pennies and string them together to make a little rainchain.
-Put them all around vulnerable garden seedlings to repel slugs. The folklore is that slugs touching copper will experience a tiny electric shock as electrons are exchanged between slimy slug and copper.
-Find one heads up to have good luck.
-Prompt your backstabbing workmate to pick up the one that is tails side up on the sidewalk so that he will have bad luck.
-Place one on your loved one's grave to let them know you have been there and think of them.
-Use one as inspriation for song. "Pennies...pennies from heaven."
-Visit another country and take a penny to your host's child for the novelty of foreign coinage.
-Use a small collection of pennies to entertain a young child by encouraging them make designs with the pennies.
-Sew them onto your belt to decorate it.
-Place them in the hems of your draperies to make them hang smoothly. (When I was a kid drapes had little plates of lead to do that!)
-Play penny-pitch with them (did someone already say this?)
-Put one on the back of your hand. Quickly drop your hand downward while turn it over to catch the penny on the flat plam of your hand. Reverse the action to catch it on the back of your hand.
-Get a big silky scarf and rubber band a penny into each of its corners. Then, hold the penny-corners together, and roll up the scarf ocer the pennies. Thrown it as high into the air as you can! Then watch the scarf float slowly down like a parachute.
-Pour a patio and put one penny for each of your kids into a discrete spot beofre the concrete sets. Pennies should be dated with the birth years of the kids. Tell them these are their pennies, but that you did not want them to spend it easily.
-Wrap one or more in electrical tape to make a heavier "corkball" for that baseball like game.
-Put one or more inside an empty salt box, taping the openning closed to make a rhythm toy for young kids.
-Demonstrate transfer of energy by making a short line of them on a table, then slide one penny forcefully onto the end of the line. See how at the far end of the line one penny then scoots away from the rest of the line.
-Roll one down one of those cool parabolic funnels that send the penny spiralling around and around and around, downward, until it final falls down the middle chute.
-Put one or more inside a couple of faoil pie pans taped together to make different sounding rhthym toy. I guess we could bring this all the way up to 50 by suggesting enough different items to put pennies into to shake and jangle along with the music.
-Jangle? I've got spurs that jingle, jangle, jingle..... bend two of those pennies we put on the rail road track. pierce a hole through them and also through a third flattend but unbent penny. Stack the pennies together over a paperclipe with the flat one in the middle. Slip a piece of string through the opposite end of the paperclip and tie around your kid's ankle so she can pretend she has spurs. Might go well with one of those broomstick horses.
-Let your child thow them into the garden to magically find agin next spring. It as if the fairies seeded the garden with pennies, even though the child knows they did it themselves. A neighbor child used to do this, throwing them from her second floor window.
-See if one will cling to the end of your nose without having to tilt your head back.
-Put one into the slots of your penny loafer.
-Ask someone much older than yourself what kinds of things a penny used to buy.
-Find a place that still sells penny candy and buy a piece!
-Quintuple your money: Find someone who is willing to give you a nickel for your penny!
-See how far you can roll a penny down a hard floored hallway.
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