Eli 8.4
I was riding at the park on Friday morning, and on my way back to the parking lot, I passed by a cluster of guys who do maintenance in the park. One of them looked at me as I rode by, and I said, "How's it going?"He smiled and said, "Where's your boy?"
"In school," I said. "But he'll be riding with me on Sunday."
I rode off, but in the background I heard him say, "You've got to see his boy ride. He's unbelievable!"
I think that's usually an accurate description.
I mentioned last week that I'd had quite a fall on Sunday. It's now ten days later, and I've got a dollar-bill sized bruise on the outside of my calf, which must be the biggest bruise I've ever had. I should know better than to ride new trail courses without walking them first (hopefully I do now).
Last Friday night, I called my friend Mike. "Hey, Eli made dribbled and scored three baskets today," I said.
That's not hard for an eight-year old, but Mike tried to be encouraging. "That's great," he said.
"On his unicycle," I said.
"WHAT?" he said.
That's a little bit harder.
I took a jar of change to the grocery store last week to use the automatic coin sorter, and after feeding rejected coins back in a few times, there was only one that wouldn't go through. I picked it up and saw that it was a wheat penny, which is pretty rare to see these days. I turned it over to check the date.
1929.
That's, by far, the oldest penny I've ever found. I did find a 1918 penny when I was a kid, but that was over forty years ago.
Eli 8.4 has a ramshackle coin collection, so I gave it to him. It doesn't mean as much to him as it did when I was a kid, because there are exponentially more things to be interested in, but he still appreciated a penny that had been around for a very, very long time.
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