Thanksgiving is a good time to count blessings, change

If it's a penny for your thoughts and you put in your two cents worth, then someone, somewhere is making a penny.

-- Steven Wright

Before my folks came over for Thanksgiving dinner last week, I told them that we had a project planned after everyone finished eating.

Knowing me, they suspected it involved painting, wallpaper or the moving of heavy furniture.

Actually it was none of the above.

When the meal was done, we retired to a smaller (but sturdy) kitchen table. I asked everyone to take a seat, fixed them a cup of coffee or hot tea and proceeded to unload two years of jars, bottles and piggy banks full of spare change on the tabletop in front of them.

"We're rolling coins," I said, which is how we celebrated our seasonal thankfulness.

For the record, we spent about four hours, stacking dimes and nickels and pennies.

Lots of pennies.

All of these were collected over the past 24 months when I emptied my pockets at the end of the day.

I had meant to do it a year ago, but the change jars had begun to look so daunting, I had put off the challenge.

The delay meant more coins.

I quickly developed a system. I would go through the pile looking for nickels and take them out. Nickels are bigger and bulky and fairly easy to find.

After a while, that left only pennies and dimes.

The contrast between their colors made separating them easier. In fact, I noticed, everyone was going for the dimes. Maybe because they're lighter.

In the end, the mound of brown pennies remained.

And slowly but surely the mound became a substantial stack of rolled coinage.

Someone asked why I didn't just take it all to the grocery to dump in that machine that automatically counts it and gets you your money in a more manageable form.

"Because they take a cut," I said grimly. "And I don't like the idea of paying someone else to count my money."

When it was all said and done, we had counted $254.15.

For fun, I put it in a bag and weighed it on the bathroom scales -- 38.6 pounds.

ALWAYS AN EXCEPTION: A linguistics professor was lecturing to his class one day. "In English," he said, "a double negative forms a positive. In some languages, though, such as Russian, a double negative is still a negative."

"However," he pointed out, "there is no language wherein a double positive can form a negative."

A voice from the back of the room piped up, "Yeah. Right."

TODAY'S JOKE: A policeman pulled over an auto driven by an elderly spinster and began to write out a ticket.

"What are you putting down?" the woman snapped.

"Well," said the officer, "I'm citing you for crossing over the center line three times, running a stop sign, turning left at a red light, not to mention that I had to follow you five blocks with my lights flashing to get you to stop."

"You know," she said, "it's a shame you came after me while there are still so many drunks on the roads."

"To tell the truth, ma'am," said the policeman, "I thought I had one."

Reach Bill Kirby at (706) 823-3344 or bill.kirby@augustachronicle.com.