Most people don’t much much attention to their spare change. A few people will use it to stretch their paper money as far as they can, searching for endless minutes for an exact amount to avoid reaching into their wallets. Yet for most people it either sits in their purse or pocket until it gets heavy enough to be annoying or gets thrown into a charity bucket here or there.
The buying power of spare change is being driven home for me in an interesting way at a rather late age in life. A few weeks ago my youngest son, Shortman, joined a community service program called Young Marines. Affiliated with the U.S. Marine Corps it isn’t a recruiting program but is carried out in the manner of Marine Corps life. It is a program basically to help keep kids between 7-19 off drugs, in school, and out of trouble.
The Shortman was in danger of absolutely none of these things but was attracted to the program’s Marine style training and focus on discipline and leadership. As a pacifist these things cause me to jump out of my skin everytime one of the leaders speaks, but for my Shortman it’s a little piece of heaven.
A couple of weeks ago the Shortman’s Young Marines group started a penny war fundraiser with proceeds going to purchase a safety/kevlar vest for either a police or military bomb dog. The group is broken into four units, one of which is my Shortman’s bootcamp recruits, and each of the four units has a change bucket. The kids all collect spare change during the week and then at the Wednesday meeting they put their “silver” change and bills in their unit’s bucket then distribute the pennies in the other three buckets. The point of it being whichever unit raises the most money at the end wins the penny war.
My Shortman is all over this and anyone he comes in contact with is certain to be asked if they would like to donate their change. Curious about what sort of impact my son was making on the recruits penny war effort I counted the change in his jar this morning. In the last week just by dropping the change from my pocket into the jar at the end of the day he has raised $14.48.
To a world where gas is $3.39 a gallon and milk about the same that $14 doesn’t seem like a lot but to a 9yr old boy trying to make a dent in a $600.00 vest for a dog who saves lives it’s a hell of a start. Considering this will be his third time to put in his change (I should have counted before but I’m a little slow) that $14.48 holds a whole lot of power and confidence that his goal will be met and his recruit unit will see victory.
PSA *** If you would like to contribute spare change to the Shortman’s cause you can contact me by email, at Facebook, or comment below. ***
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