Coined Words of A Writer – Streams of Consciousness Saturday.

‘When you give a beggar a coin, you buy him a meal for the day.’ I guess this saying would have been applicable in the past. Gone are the days when a coin could fetch you something worthwhile. Now a beggar needs as many coins as he can get to buy anything to eat.

I remember my growing up days when my eyes grew round and shone like new coins or should I say kobo’s in expectation of earning a coin from running errands for a number of uncles and aunties who sent us down to the neighbourhood store to buy an item for them.

That coin represented a yummy goody-goody chewy chocolate stick or a handful of Chat bonbons.

Unfortunately, as I grow older the value in coins also drops with age – except if it’s a gold coin – but I still love the jingle of coins and I guess my love for them has translated into my growing coin collection from different parts of the World.

I don’t collect them with the expectations that they will suddenly grow in value overnight – though that’s a possibility, who knows? The value I receive is more of the emotional and intrinsic value that most keepsakes give us.

Something else that I love to collect are words, in the form of books or as my own thoughts and to think of it, if I am to receive a coin for all the words that I string together I would have a storehouse filled with bags of coins, coincidentally, as a writer our words which happen to be in abundance don’t fetch as much coin as we would like.

To be a writer is a painstaking work borne out of love for words and I guess I just have to settle with coining words that enrich my soul and possibly others’ as well. After all said and done, words are priceless and do carry a lot of weight.

I had no idea where I was going with the prompt word ‘Coin’ for SoCS, I just followed my rambling train of thought. Thank you, Linda 🙂

© Jacqueline Oby-Ikocha