One afternoon, while going through my drawer, I found an unexpected piece of treasure, a flattened penny from the American Museum of Natural History. I was confused for a moment, asking myself how this made its way to the back of my drawer. But as I stared at it longer, I began to feel nostalgic as I remembered the full story. In a flash, I was back in those cold, bittersweet New York days growing up, and all the times my mom took me to museums and parks. While holding the penny, I could see my 9-year-old self pulling that giant metal lever with both hands while the machine vibrated and cranked, my weak arms struggling yet pushing away. The warm stretched penny landed perfectly into my hands while I stared mesmerized by the gleaming dinosaur print, making it feel like a prize for my hard work. Staring at its gleam in the palm of my hand, just like I once did, felt like that spark had returned.
In seconds, I was no longer in my room, I was nine again. It was strange how quickly the image came back. All the dinosaur exhibits, the sound of my footsteps against the large marble floors of the halls, everything in New York looked huge to me when I was young and barely able to reach the railing. Yet, I hadn’t thought about any of that in years.
What’s funny is that the penny was never supposed to matter. When I was making the penny, it wasn’t meaningful to me. It wasn’t symbolic. It wasn’t sentimental, just a cheap souvenir every kid gets because the machine looks fun. I didn’t save it intentionally, I just never bothered to throw it away.
And yet, years later, that tiny thing carried an entire world that doesn’t exist for me anymore – a world where everything felt bigger, simpler, and full of wonder in a way I didn’t realize I would eventually grow out of.
But here’s the thing, this isn’t really about the penny. You might not care about my museum trip or my nostalgic feelings towards New York. Regardless, everyone else has these sorts of memories or objects as well. It could be an old concert wristband that you don’t even remember attending, a photo booth strip, a sticker, or in my case, a pointless souvenir, which you picked up because it felt important for five minutes. Something worthless, but impossible to let go of.
What is it that keeps us holding on to these things? It’s not because we want the past back, but because they remind us that the past was real. Today, when I see the penny, my thoughts are not on the museum, but on the time of my life captured by that penny. Objects like this become timestamps – quiet reminders of who we were. In the end, these memories represent an understated, but beautiful kind of memory. Nostalgia isn’t about wanting the past back, it’s about recognizing the pieces of it that shaped us. And when we take a moment to look at the small things we’ve kept, we’re reminded that growing up is full of moments worth carrying forward, even if they exist only in the objects that stayed behind. The penny shows exactly how far I’ve drifted from my childhood self, but it also proves that every version of that kid still builds who I am, pressed into me the same way its imprint is pressed into the metal.
