Skip to main content

Nickel Tapping


I don't know who told me this, or why I believed it. I was in high school, and someone said that if you took a regular nickel and pounded around the rim of it long enough, the center would fall out and you would have made a ring. I don't know if the pounding was supposed to be done with a metal spoon, or if that was my own odd touch, but sure enough, I started carrying around a nickel and a metal spoon, pilfered from the school cafeteria; I had them with me everywhere. I would tap, tap, tap on the edge of the nickel whenever I had a spare moment. Did it annoy the people around me? If it did, no one said so. I remember thinking that I was probably falling for some stupid trick, and yet . . . it's true that the rim of the nickel started getting beautifully smooth and nicely raised, definitely a ring in the making. I don't know how long I carried around the nickel and the spoon, and who knows how many taps I must've given it (one good thing: keeping both hands busy meant there was no devil's playground for me). Sadly, I cannot tell you whether it was in fact true that, if I'd kept at it, the center would have dropped out of the coin. I either lost interest, or else lost the coin and didn't want to begin again. I am almost tempted to start another one, actually, just to satisfy my curiosity; however, I cannot justify the time it would take. Long gone are the days when I had so little obligation in my life that I could tap on a nickel all day! Maybe it's an assignment I'll give to my son someday when he claims to be bored, see how far he goes with it. Then again, maybe not: I'd be the one listening to the tapping then, and I'm not sure I'd have the patience that my friends apparently had with this project. (But if you're so inspired, have way too much time on your hands, and can tell me how it turns out, I'm all ears!)
Labels:

Comments

ltamikey said…
I have recently had a simular vauge memory of a tale my belated grandfather use to tell.(He was a little crazy and I was beginning to think I was as well.) So I decided to do the ol' trusted Google search on this topic... And I found your blog. This makes me think that maybe it really does work, or maybe it's just a thing our elders told us to have fun...either way, it was very comforting to know that I am not the only one!!:) Thank you!!
March 22, 2011 at 3:41 PM

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Keith Jarrett, Carnegie Hall

It was only last night, but already it rates among my most powerful memories—one I know will reverberate down time's lonely corridors, enduring where the daily slush of logistical life (thankfully) does not. Yesterday contained plenty of logistical craziness, but by 8:00 PM I was seated in the last row of the dress circle at Carnegie Hall next to my father, looking down on a stage empty but for a single piano, a bench, and a collection of microphones wired for the live recording of Keith Jarrett's solo improvisational performance. I have always loved these charged moments of anticipation before a performance, and I expected this concert to be something special—that much more so because the tickets came through a friend of a very dear friend in California, a last-minute opportunity to be seized, and because a love of Keith Jarrett was transmitted to me by my father, and this was a great way to thank him for bringing awareness of this man's music into my life. But this is all...
12 comments
Read more

Touch Club

Another experience to come out of my father's L.A. years with Playboy was involvement with a private, membership-based Beverly Hills supper club called Touch. The connections are fuzzy in my mind. I always want to say that the club was backed financially by Playboy Enterprises, but I'm not sure this is accurate. It may have just been that one of the club's owners belonged to Hefner's entourage—being one of the many who made it their business to stop by the Playboy mansion on a regular basis. Or perhaps he (I forget his name, despite having heard it regularly at one point in my life) was a salaried employee of the company, linked somehow to club/casino operations? However it came into being, the Touch Club opened in the early 1980s (perhaps it was the year 1980; it was eventually sold in 1986), and we dined there sometimes, my parents and I; this was always a special occasion I got to dress up for. I don't remember the menu, but based on the intended clientele, I...
1 comment
Read more

Ships (Westport, CT)

I graduated from high school in 1987, and although I had applied to college (one only, I knew what I wanted) and gotten my acceptance, I deferred matriculation for a year. It was for the best. Teen angst and anger were peaking, I was sick of school, and really it would've been a waste for me to go straight through when all I could think of was living on my own in the "real" world. Well, I got a dose of that. A good dose of what I could expect to do with a high school diploma and—let it be said—a bunch of shifty slackers for roommates, whose only ambition was to get wasted and stay that way all day. Except that I was not a slacker; that's something I never have been. And even if I had wanted to party—illegally, mind you, I was still underage for beer let alone the rest of what was out there to be had—well, there wasn't the time or energy for it. After a somewhat lost summer following graduation, I set about getting a job, a checking account, and an apartment, tryin...
Post a Comment
Read more