THE PENNY ROLLERS

The year was 1970, It was my first day of Jr. High School and I was scared to death. I couldn't find my locker, the upperclassmen were handing out "elevator passes" in our single story school, and I was pretty certain the "Mod Squad" lunch pail that my mom had bought me was going to get my butt kicked.

At the Central Jr. High School in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, all students who arrived early were required to go to the gymnasium and wait for the bell that would dismiss us to go to our first class. Boys had to sit on one side of the gym and girls were required to sit on the other side. To this day, I can’t figure out what kind of trouble they thought we were going to get into if the two sexes were allowed to mingle for those 15 minutes prior to class.

It was on that first day of school that I became acquainted with the penny rollers.

Every morning, some unfortunate teacher was assigned the duty of monitoring the gymnasium. On occasion they would step outside for a few minutes, and it was during those brief unsupervised moments that the penny rollers began their game.

There was a small, dark haired boy who attended my school. For the purposes of this blog, I’m going call him “Buddy.” Whenever the teacher stepped out of the room, a group of boys would begin rolling pennies across the gym floor and Buddy would scurry after them, picking them up and putting them into his pockets while peels of laughter came from both sides of the gym.

No one seemed to know much about Buddy. You would often see him riding around town with his father in a beat up old pickup loaded with scrap metal. It always reminded me of a real-life “Sanford and Son.” I don’t know if Buddy was poor, but I always assumed that was the case as I watched him chase pennies.

The penny rollers continued their game on and off for the next three school years. On one occasion, I happened to be in the bathroom at the same time as Buddy when the penny rollers walked in. They emptied their pockets of coins and threw them in the commodes. They taunted him mercilessly; prodding him to reach in and fish them out.

Buddy was in my ninth-grade algebra class. One day we had a substitute teacher who began class by calling roll. When he called Buddy’s name I heard a voice behind me say “here”. The sound of his voice startled me; not because it had an unusual timbre but because in that moment I realized I had known Buddy for three years and this was the first time I had ever heard him speak. As I thought about it, it began to make sense. After all, what do you say to people who routinely humiliate you for entertainment?

I patted myself on the back because I had never been guilty of rolling pennies, but I also knew I had never done anything to stop them either.

A few days ago I pulled up to an intersection and saw a man with a “will work for food" sign sitting beside the traffic light. The car in front of me was filled with teenagers. As they pulled up to the light they dumped all of the empty fast food wrappers they had in their car out of the windows and yelled “here you go” to the man with the sign. For a few seconds I was back in Jr. High, watching pennies roll across a gym floor.

Buddy, I’m sorry.

Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungerd, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?

Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. (Matthew 25: 44-45 KJV)