It’s summer. So naturally my second son wants to write a letter to the United States Mint and ask them to create a coin based on a new sketch he has drawn.
What do I do? I buy him a stamp and find the address for the Denver location. And reassure him that they may never write back.
Sure, his favorite author Mary Pope Osborn wrote him back a couple of summers ago. A few years before that the Dinosaur Park in Ogden responded when he wrote them about a fossil that he thought he found in our back yard.
And I still can’t believe he got a large envelope from the White House last year with pictures and a letter from his political hero – President Obama.
He was certain the mint would reply. I was skeptical. But I’m not one to dampen his ambitions. So I kept quiet as he raced to the mailbox day after day waiting for his new coin.
It took two weeks and then he came running in to the house with an envelope from Colorado.
The Denver mint had written back. They didn’t craft him his new coin, but they sent him and his older brother a press kit with brochures, pictures and a mint-condition 2017 penny paired with a completely unstamped, blank penny.
He was on cloud nine.
How can he be so lucky? I can’t even get the swing set company to answer the phone regarding replacement parts to our set.
Maybe I need him to write to Robert Downy Jr. on my behalf, asking for an autographed picture.
Better yet, maybe he’d write the mint back and ask for two newly printed $20s to replace the ones that my dog ate a few months back.
You never know!
Boogers on the Wall 