Twelve Old Pennies! Quite a Heavy Weight.

Mannie was another foster parent of mine during my difficult hormonally touchy teens. Did you notice that? I am blaming my hormones for my childhood rigours. Well it feels kind of nice to give my poor benighted Mother a bit of a rest from my vituperative written retribution. As I have said before, it wasn't all her fault. Life sometimes deals out a bad hand. She just happened to be sitting at the wrong table, at the wrong crap game. A proper 'crap' shuffle on that occasion.

Where was I? Yes, Mannie, a foster father. In his younger days Mannie managed to scrape together a living of sorts as a fairground boxer. He was a bit of a bullshitter, but he showed me photos of himself at the boxing booth, so I know his claims to be true. When I first met him in his seventies he was still a pugnacious little character, and he had that boxers face. A kind of a battered handsome look.

He told me, that he had spent most of his life as a showman, living in a wagon and traveling all over with funfairs. I wish I could have got him to open up a bit about his life, but he didn't seem to have a lot to say about it, except what a good boxer he had been, and how successful he had been with the ladies.

The old pennies were one and a quarter inches across and heavy.

Boxing and sex! These were his main interests. He taught me a bit of boxing. As for sex, well he spoke about it a lot, but I never learnt anything from him on that subject, except how good he once was at it.

He once confided to me, that he had a very large penis. In his heyday, he was able to balance twelve pennies on it. In a line!

Now I am unable to confirm if this was true or not, because at the time he told me this remarkable fact, he also told me wistfully, and with a genuine sadness in his voice, that he was now down to eight pennies!