J.P. Devine, right, and his beloved baby sister, who passed away in September, in this undated photo. Submitted photo

I started “serious dating” at 12 years old. It was a Sunday afternoon matinee at the old Melba Theatre, and an ice cream cone on the way home that included a sit down on Rosemary DeBranco’s front porch where, while she licked her cone, she popped this question.

“A penny for your thoughts,” she muttered.

That was not the first time I had ever heard that.

Growing up in a family of older folks from centuries past, a lot of sentences were about the penny.

It all began this week with a story on the 6 o’clock new that told us the great copper-toned coin we call the penny would soon disappear as though it were a cigarette butt or a candy wrapper.

The American penny has a fabled history, and, we’re told, once “bore the image of a woman with flowing hair symbolizing liberty.” The coin was larger then and made of pure copper, while today’s smaller penny, the annoying one demanded at the drive-through window, is made of copper and zinc. I’ll bet you didn’t know that. Well, you know it now, along with other things you’ve been ignoring.

Neither did this boy, whose whole life, up until he was given a credit card and had his whole life changed, was blinded by flashes of cash to impress a girl, paper folded in a wallet or dropped on the table of a restaurant.

For over two centuries, we learned, the penny’s design has symbolized the spirit of the nation, from Liberty to Lincoln.

To this day, our pennies lie in little pools of copper and zinc, in piggy banks or jars, at the bottom of pants pockets, in the folds in old ladies’ purses, or in the cracks of old brick buildings where they were tossed by boys like me playing ancient games.

You knew it when you sang along to “Penny Lane” by the Beatles.

You could ask your mother or grandma about Bing Crosby or Frank Sinatra singing Arthur Johnston and John Burke’s “Pennies From Heaven.”

“Every time it rains.

It rains pennies from heaven.

Don’t you know each cloud contains.

Pennies from heaven?”

You do now.

But you have to read me to learn how much a simple penny found on the sidewalk or down beneath the pillows in an old couch means.

It brought for me a day long ago, a moment in a corner drug store when I and my beloved baby sister, who passed away in September, were standing in front of the candy counter. She was holding a nickel she had found in the snow on the street. It was a big deal, back in those hard days, for a little girl to find a nickel in the snow. We took it in to Schneider’s drug and candy store. It was her nickel so I stood back and watched her press her nose to the candy counter glass.

Old Man Schneider soon picked up a Milky Way bar that I knew cost a nickel and said, “Here’s something that costs a nickel.”

She held it in her little hand for a moment, like a diamond, a nickel wet with snow.

She paused, this little girl, looked up at him for the longest moment and then asked. “How much penny candy do I get for a nickel? “Oh my,” he said “a whole bag full.”

“I’ll have the bagful so I can share it with my big brother.” And she looked up at me, took my hand and smiled.

Go to the oldest of your family tonight, hold their hand and ask them for “a penny for your thoughts.” You may get a smile, or a tear.

J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer.