Publishers Note
Commentary by Scot Giambalvo
Money, money, money… money.
Progress results from what? Moving forward, right? And in doing that, isn’t it likely that we will have to leave something behind? We invented the car, so we left the horse and buggy behind. We invented the telephone, so we left the telegraph behind. We invented e-mail, so we left the U.S. Postal Service behind.
All that being true, why in the hell is there still a penny? The penny, no disrespect to Honest Abe, is an also-ran. A has-been. To borrow from John Cleese: in the world of currency, it has ceased to be. It is an ex-coin.
What good does the penny do anymore? Sure they’re perfect tokens for making a wish, or playthings for testing the “it’ll derail a train if you put it on a track” tale, or even a novelty for making that cool stretched penny souvenir thing at the shore or the zoo (which costs $1.50 and it’s technically a felony, isn’t it?), but really…what function does the penny perform in our modern society? There’s an actual Penny Lovers organization that is fighting for the penny to not be phased out like the telegraph and the DeLorean. Although, I’d like to see a penny with gull-wing doors.
There are supposedly 180 billion pennies somewhere in the world. Tons of valuable copper is stuck in couches, lying helpless under car seats, piling up very slowly in empty water cooler bottles, and kept as perfect scratchers for Lottery cards. But it’s supposed to be money, right? Does anyone ever actually consider the penny to be money? It’s practically a joke. Do we ever use the penny to actually buy anything? This is a part of our currency that is worth 1/100 of a soda, 1/75 of a candy bar, 1/50 of a newspaper, 1/25 of a single cigarette, AND it costs 1.3 cents to mint it! Is this progress? What’s the thinking here? NO business would ever produce something that would lose a third of its value per unit! The penny seems to have nothing redeeming about it. Sure, it seems like a quality piece of work, it being all metal and shiny and stuff, and that might be enough for crows and your three-year-old nephew, but it never passes the drop test, my experiment in human behavior and values.
Okay: You’re walking down the street in New York’s bowery. It’s so hot that the fish stink before they’re pulled out of the water. Cockroaches are scurrying out of the tenements just to breathe. The wads of gum stuck on the sidewalk since the 70s are getting tacky. You can see the air. You drop something and it lands in something else…and “else” is about the best you can do to describe it. Here is the test. Take inventory of what is important to you and decide whether you’d pick up the dropped thing from the goo that seems to be undulating and breathing and rotting all over it. Nope. Not me. Color me one penny—and probably one viral infection—poorer. The ability of the penny to break a nickel just isn’t enough. I remember when I used to line the pennies I found on the ground up on my window sill. It was exhilarating when I got up to one hundred. Now…I’m sure that I’ve passed enough “stuck” pennies to buy a mobile home.
Ya know, I heard of a guy who put ads in a bunch of newspapers asking
people to send him one penny so he could finance his college tuition.
Here is a guy who was able to exploit the penny’s reputation as
ineffectual. Ironically, he was effective. He received over $20,000.
Hmmm…
And then there was those computer hackers who withdrew one cent from every account in a Northern California bank chain. Only a handful of depositor were willing to press charges again a group who lifted over $70,000.
And I publish a newspaper. Sheeeesh!
All of this fervor wells from the fact that the penny has finally become more of a burden than an asset. How many of you scrounge through your pocket or your purse for that ever elusive penny to give the cashier, so you don’t get four in return, instead? C’mon we’ve all been there, the penny is just a pain in the… pocket.
I hope you find this issue of MODE Weekly as enjoyable as we enjoyed making it.
Scot Giambalvo
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