Challenge Coin Collection Gets Challenged By Toddler

I have been ruminating a lot lately on my military coin collection, a tradition from service often carried onward. The more places you go, the more people you meet and interact with, the more coins you'll have. My coins from military days both at home and abroad are now augmented by new coins from civilian life in the decade since.

Recently, my son has taken to playing with these coins which I ordinarily kept nice and tight. Dress right, dress. One of the last vestiges of the hyper discipline from another life and another time. 

But alas, a toddler has goals and he was fascinated by all of these coins and has hid them all over the place in parts unknown. The first few times I took them away and just moved them higher up on the shelf... then he'd just climb up higher to get them. Reaching a bit higher each time. Until before long I relented and gave up on trying to keep the collection from him. 

Now they're all over the place. Hidden. When I asked where they are he'd say "sorry Daddy." 

The same process played out with medals as well until only one is truly out of his reach now. But it's not my medal, it's my maternal grandfather's Good Conduct medal from the Second World War. He gave it to me when I was barely old enough to throw the ball around. 

I imagine that may have been the last medal he bothered to keep around after three kids and five long decades separated him from the events it relates to. 

Maybe he went through exactly the same process of letting go of the tangible and physical, reaching out to the eternal instead. 

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Troy M. Olson is an Army Veteran, lawyer by training, and co-author (with Gavin Wax) of ‘The Emerging Populist Majority’ now available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Target. He is the Sergeant-at-Arms of the New York Young Republican Club and co-founder of the Veterans Caucus. He lives in New York City with his wife and son, and is the 3rd Vice Commander (“Americanism” pillar) of the first new American Legion Post in the city in years, Post 917. You can follow him on X/Twitter and Substack at @TroyMOlson