Larry Miller, contributing humorist

ALL MEN carry specific things in their pockets, and the items and locations are as constant as the Northern Star. For as long as I can remember, I have carried my wallet in my left front pocket, and a knife, Zippo lighter, and change in my right front. The denomination of the change is always exact: three quarters, two dimes, and a nickel. And a silver dollar.

I like silver dollars. When I was little, my Aunts Tini and Ethel, and their husbands, Sam and Sol, always brought my sister and me silver dollars when they came to visit; real, silver dollars, one for each of us. I still have a stack of them in my desk, and some are very old. There is something very good and very American about European Jews with accents, whose family was gassed, kissing a five-year-old and handing him a coin from 1782. I have bought many silver dollars since, and I never feel exactly right if I leave the house in the morning without one of them. I always carry a silver dollar.

In my work, every time I walk through the curtain on a talk show, from my first Carson shot to the last Letterman, every time I have a job on a sitcom or a movie, whenever I walk out of a dressing room, I don't take my wallet, I don't take the change, I don't take the knife or the lighter, but I always have a silver dollar in my right, front pocket. Always.

Until now. I got a coin from a Marine a few weeks ago, the day after Christmas. I'm looking at it now. And I don't carry silver dollars any more, because I carry his coin instead, every day, and that's what I'll carry until I see him again. Here's how I got it.

My wife and I took our children to Lego Land over Christmas. It's just above San Diego, a great theme park, clean and well-run, and the kids adore it. It was not our first visit, nor our second, and that ought to say something right there about the joint, unless, of course, you're a complete idiot and still go back to places after being treated like a steaming turd. There's a fine hotel just a couple of miles away, and we've been there before, too, and the kids love that place as much as Lego Land, and we're fortunate to be able to stay there.

I should probably say here that I didn't want to go in the first place, and that's because I never want to go anywhere in the first place. Like most family men, I firmly--no, rigidly--believe that ever leaving your home voluntarily is an act of galloping stupidity. If I have time off, I'd actually like to lounge around my own bed in my own room, pour juice from my own fridge--you get the idea.

For example, last year, the Divine Mrs. M. buttonholed me downstairs at our bar (my favorite vacation spot, by the way), and told me about a terrific place up the coast that has "Condos, individual apartments, one or two bedrooms, full kitchen and dining areas, play room for the kids, and a washer-dryer in every unit!" I marked my place in the dusty volume I was reading, took a sip and replied, "So, in other words, if we pack everything we own very carefully, spend thousands of dollars, prepare a trip with the precision of the Inchon Landing, and get really, really lucky, we can spend two weeks in a place that's nearly twenty percent as good as the house we have now." I believe my sarcasm eluded her, but at least she left me alone to read and drink.