Find a penny, pick me up – A WWBH post

This post is part of the Writer Wednesday Blog Hop, a weekly meme designed to inspire creativity and encourage sharing of stories.

The hop is co-hosted by Leanne Sype at Writings and Ruminations, Tena Carr at Taini’s Writings and myself over at Reading, Writing and Everything in Between,

Welcome to the first prompt for 2015! I trust you had a good Christmas and New Year? Great!

My participation in this little hop dwindled somewhat in the last few months of 2014, so I have it on my New Year goal list to do better and submit more often. Fingers crossed I can keep it up

The challenge this week is to write a piece in up to 500 words using one picture and five random words:

Bottle, ostrich, schedule, binder, spoon

My story:

Find a penny, pick me up

So, here I am again, just sitting on the floor, waiting for someone to notice me and pick me up. Why does this always have to happen to me? You don’t see any other coins lingering on the ground for so long, do you? But I’m not worth very much really, not compared to the big guys.

Of course, if you put me together with enough of my fellows we all add up to the same as those guys. We’re usually the kind to spend the majority of our lives shut up in random money boxes, pots or bottles though. We don’t get to see much daylight.

I once knew another penny, he’d been stuck in a shoe box with me a long while until the big man took him away again. I thought he was a regular penny, like me, but it turns out he was kind of special, limited edition or something, and now he lives in some kind of binder with other rare coins. Fancy that, eh? Still, I don’t see how living wrapped away like that is any better than being in the shoe box. And I can’t see how a penny can ever be worth more then a penny, but there you go. These big people are quite strange.

I spent a few months rattling around in one of their tractors once. He wasn’t a regular farmer either, he had ostriches. Can you believe that? How much stranger can you get than farming ostriches?

I’m just biding my time here, enduring the wind and the rain, the footsteps and the pram wheels. It’s a good job I don’t have a schedule to keep like all these folks, I’d never get anything done! Now and then I get a tickle of interest, a child will spot me, but mum is usually dragging them along before they have a chance to reach me. Children are always the best ones to be found by, they think they’ve won the lottery whenever they find any money. They’re always getting you out to have a look at you, cleaning you up and putting you on display. They’re quite clumsy though, children, and will soon drop you as they’re rushing around.

There are some big ones that have ruined it for the majority of us, of course. I’ve had a few friends that have been glued to the pavement or driveway, tempting people to look a fool. Thanks to them we hardly get a chance now.

Still, I should be glad for what I am. If I were any other item, being lost or thrown away so often, I’d probably get melted down and turned into spoons or something. Now, what kind of life can that be, in and out of mouths all day. No thank you! I’d rather sit here on the pavement if it’s all the same to you.

Word count: 480