A Tale Of Friendship And Love.

Keith met his wife when he was 5 years old. Their parents were friends and they went to the same church and school. They grew up as friends but never thought about dating each other. Before Carol's sixteenth birthday she asks Keith if he would like to take her on a date. So Keith looks in his book of 101 great dates and picks out a few ideas. One of the ideas that he liked was to get a roll of pennies and take it to the wish fountain. He could afford that, he thought.

So he borrows his mom's station wagon and picks her up from her house. They go to the local mall and see a completely forgettable movie at the dollar cinema. After the movie, they walk around the mall and make their way over to the fountain. He's disappointed to see that it was closed for repair reasons. So they make their way to the second storey of the mall at the parking spot and start looking over the edge.

Keith notices a tiny puddle of standing water on the ground level and thinks that this would be good enough. He gathers the roll of pennies from his jacket's pocket and tells her about his idea. Together they counted off their wishes and throw pennies into the puddle. They run out of pennies after the 49th wish. He ignores it. After a while, he takes Carol home and they decide to remain friends.

About a year or so later, they start dating more frequently. They end up dating their senior year of high school. After graduation she goes off to a college out of state and they decide to break up while they are apart. It is also decided that when she is home for the summer and if neither of them are seeing someone they would go out again as a couple. This goes on and off for a while till they are in their mid-twenties. Soon Keith realizes that she is the one for him.

Fast-forward a few years, Keith and Carol have become parents to two beautiful children and one of them has been married for ten years. On their 10th wedding anniversary, Carol gives him a card. When he opens it, he finds a penny taped inside. This penny had a heart shaped hole punched through it. He remembers seeing that he had seen this worn out penny on her key-chain for years. She tells him to look into the envelope. He does as told and finds a handwritten note inside.

Keith unfolds it and comes to know that it was torn out of her journal. The date on the piece of paper was of their first date on her 16th birthday. He also notices some rambling which was evidently from the mind of a 16-year-old girl, but at the bottom of the page he sees an account of their date.

He further reads a paragraph from the journal that reads that she had stolen a penny from him. She wanted to keep that one last wish for herself. This last wish of hers was to marry someone like the boy who took her on her first date. There was a piece of an old scotch tape in the corner of the page making it obvious that the penny was taped in that corner for a long time.

"Thanks for making my wish come true," she tells him and gives him a kiss.