Pennies

Before we break down the penny, first let us look at its position in our culture. Pennies do not work in vending machines, toll booths* or ticket counters. Any time you're paying a non-human entity, it seems, you cannot use the penny. (It also does not come into play when you're paying with a check card, but that goes without saying.) But for all the complaints against it, the penny is invaluable to human interaction, the payment of cash and the receiving of change. And this applies to anyone who has every worked or shopped retail (which, one imagines, should be everyone, give or take. I make no assumptions about the demographics of my readership, if, that is, I have any...)

*The one exception to this rule, needless to say, is Illinois (or so I've heard tell.) And the reason why Illinois still accepts pennies in their toll booths to this very day? Lincoln was born there.

So today's experiment, what does 1000 pennies look like? If I were to stack 1000 pennies everyday instead of writing 1000 words, how high would that stack be? How much money would be represented by that stack, and how much would it weigh? Most importantly, what could I do with it?

1000 pennies would weigh approximately 6.5 pounds and stack up, one on top of the other, to be about 1.9 meters in height (or slightly taller than your humble moderator.) This would be trickier than any of us could fathom, as the law of Jenga averages assures us, anything whose height exceeds a foot and half is prone to timely and hilarious collapse (this is why network hubs are recommended to rest at a relatively low position. If hung from the ceiling, ensure the connective device is made of screws and brackets and not velcroed Jenga pieces.) 1000 pennies net worth would be approximately $10.00, but that figure hasn't been confirmed by the accounting staff yet. We're working with highly improbable and abstract numeric values.

Here's a few things $10 (or 1000 pennies) would get you in today's rocky economic climate:

• one pack of cigarettes (but only in New York City)
  
• one pair of nice argyle socks
• one adult movie ticket (but only in the antiquated 2D format)
  
• one tub of bland movie theater popcorn (butter costs extra these days and I'm not made of money)
• two pairs of decent wool socks
• two tickets to the bargain matinee (which are now held Monday-Thursday nights and no one knows why)
• two packs of cigarettes (everywhere that's not New York City)
• three burgers, with or without cheese, or two with bacon, or one at a nightspot deemed too hoity-toity to earn my patronage.
• four pounds of Skittles, hopefully the original fruit (red bag) edition, but a sour (green bag) would also qualify.
  
• five pairs of dirt cheap cotton socks
• five ride tickets at the local zoo's amusement park (though, as bit of marketing savvy, each ride costs three tickets, so you can ride the full ride but your date has to get off have 2/3's of the ride has completed... which is further complicated by the fact that they don't slow that thing down when it's time for them to get off.)
• six bars of chocolate from the nearest school's fundraiser, though the amount of actually cocoa, sugar and milk in these bars is only 75% what Hershey's uses. The rest, I'm lead to believe, is sawdust and carob.
• seven one time use local bus tickets
  
• eight packets of "fun dip" which, it should be noted, is neither fun nor an actual "dip" in its modern colloquial definition.
  
• ten small fries (but only from a dollar menu, tax not included)
  

But wait, there's more! There's not a hard and fast rule that says you have to spend these 1000 pennies. It's merely an exploration of their meaning and intend. For example, if you only bought, say, one pair of decent wool socks, you could use your remaining 500 pennies to fill them up, and then you've got penny sacks which, when spun really fast, create enormous pounds of pressure per square inch, enough for breaking a window or some punk's jaw, which, in relation to the price of movie tickets, is as entertaining and only slightly against the law, which many have said the ticket prices ought to be.

Pennies also make fairly entertaining cat toys, assuming your cat (if it is not, by way of breeding and the laws of uncertainty, a dog) likes shiny things that make noises. I am on good terms with one such feline, good terms here defined as we're on a first name basis, though our conversations lately are entirely about football, a topic I am loath to bring up on my own. Point being, there's nothing this particular cat likes more than a few pennies near the edge of the counter. Not only will this cat (who shall remain nameless, lest he open yet another libel suit against me) push said pennies to the floor below, he'll watch intently as the bounce, spin and scurry to the dustiest corners of the room. He pounces on them as if they were sworn enemies (and knowing this cat and the circles he runs in, they may very well be) and carries them around, clenched between his jaws. There are few sights as priceless as a cat carrying a penny in his mouth, looking, one assumes, for a cat treat vending machine. Silly cat doesn't realize the vending machines don't accept pennies, as was previous noted above. When moving furniture or rugs or other whatnot lying around the place, one finds pennies nearly everywhere. To date, we can never be quite sure how many pennies have turned up in such locations, but in the opinion of your humble moderator, that number far exceeds 1000. It simply has to.

It's change we can all believe in.