My Two Cents

I have two coins in my hand that add up to fifteen cents.  One of them is not a nickel. What are the two coins?

Listen to the wording of my question?  ONE of them is not a nickel; I didn’t say the other one couldn’t be, did I?  So the answer is simple. My two coins are a nickel and a dime.

Do you know how often two coins are mentioned in literature, music, traditions and folk lore?  Your guess is as good as mine, but I found too many references when I tried to find the origin of “two bits for a shave and a haircut.”  (Knock the tune.)  In 1939, the musical phrase was used in a six-note tune called “shave and a haircut” by Dan Shapiro, Lester Lee, and Milton Berle.

In the mid-1990s, an upbeat music group called Dispatch sang a song titled “Two Coins.”  The lyrics said
I reach into my pocket for some small change, I reach into my pocket for some small change, yeahHey, let's drink from the cup and share some luckGo ahead and laugh, 'cause it don't cost muchNo, no, it don't, don't cost muchI stick loneliness, your lips, and the two coins of your eyesInto my pockets, yeah

The reference is probably due to the ancient custom of putting a coin on the eyes of the deceased, so they wouldn’t pop open.  The Greeks also put a coin in the mouth to pay Charon, the ferryman who ferried the person across the river separating the living from the dead. Actually, this custom is found before the Greeks in areas around the globe.
 Speaking of the dead, have you ever seen coins left on a grave stone?
  Leaving a penny on a grave simply means you’ve visited.  But military graves have a code: Leaving a penny at the grave means simply that you were in the same service branch. A nickel indicates that you and the deceased trained at boot camp together, while a dime means you served with him in some capacity. By leaving a quarter at the grave, you are telling the family that you were with the soldier when he was killed.

The Bible has many references to two coins:The Good Samaritan leaves two coins at the inn, to take care of the wounded man.  Luke 10: 30-35And in Luke 21: 1-4,  They saw the rich putting gifts in the treasury.  And there was a poor widow who only put in two mites.  Jesus said, “Truly I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than anyone. For the rich gave out of their abundance, but the widow put in all she had to live on.

Well, that’s my two cents.  I will close with a poem from poet Richard Newman

 Coins

 My change: a nickel caked with finger grime; 

two nicked quarters not long for this life, worth

 more for keeping dead eyes shut than bus fare;

 a dime, shining in sunshine like a new dime;

 grubby pennies, one stamped the year of my birth 

no brighter than I from 40 years of wear.

What purses, piggy banks and window sills

have these coins known, their presidential heads 

put into what beggar’s chalky palm—

they circulate like tarnished red blood cells, 

all of us exchanging the merest film of our lives, 

and the lives of those long dead.

And now my turn in the convenience store,

 I hand over my fist of change, still warm, 

to the bored, lip-pierced check-out girl, once more 

to be spun down cigarette machines, hurled 

in fountains, flipped for luck—these dirty charms 

                                              chiming in the dark pockets of the world.