What do I think?

New Penny – of sorts, are we going nuts, and something old is new again

by Barry Bauer

Remember pennies? They’ve become collectable because nobody wants to carry them around. What can you buy with them anymore? Penny candy has long disappeared from the scene. They’re worth more for the copper they contain than for their purchasing power.

Dollar bills have become the new penny. Nobody asks you for your two-cents worth anymore; now they’re asking for a buck’s worth.

Me, I give them $100 worth.

Every now and then some businesses will take us back to the old days and charge 99¢ for one of their offerings like a roast beef sandwich or a hamburger. This confuses the hell out of us.

And then we have those gas stations guys who haven’t figured out what to charge us yet. They think 9/10 of a cent is legal tender, and it isn’t. What if the government created a 9/10 of a cent piece just for them? We’d have to carry at least one them around just to put gas in our vehicles. And knowing the government they’d do it to help their friends in the oil industry. Of course they’d make them bigger than a quarter.

Now that’ll put a jingle back in your pocket.

Thankfully we’ve been spared all of that because the gas pump rounds it off to the next penny.

* * *

Are we going nuts in this country? Of course we are! We had a new State Police Headquarters built, and then we laid off over a hundred state troopers. Now they’re saying they won’t have enough money in their budget to safety inspect school buses, but they’re still looking. Are they nuts or what?

It’s always been known that school boards will use busing as a tool to sway the parent’s vote at millage time. Never have I heard of them using the safety of the students as a tool of persuasion.

In a related matter, where are their seat belts?

* * *

We all think that sending an e-mail is instantaneous. We expect that they’re delivered within a minute or two after we send them. I got an e-mail from a friend who lives at Houghton Lake that was sent on 10/21 and delivered on 10/23. That’s two days later!

What happened to it?

Did it pass through Twilight Zone?

I don’t know, but that is the stuff I call Eerie Pennsylvania and it doesn’t belong on my computer. Things are already eerie enough on it.

* * *

I watched the end of that heart-breaking MSU Spartan’s loss to the Iowa Hawkeyes Saturday night. It’s that damned, “prevent defense,” that did them in, so I blame the loss on the coaches and not the players. They stopped Iowa all game long with their swarming defense until the very last series of the game.

Of course with prevent defense we stopped that one strike into the end zone from midfield that would end the game, so we just let them eat up short chunks of real estate until they scored anyway.

What’s the sense of it?

That’s not what got the Spartans so close to winning this game, and the coaches are too dumb to understand that.

Yes – I’ve calmed down now.

* * *

We’ve discovered that something old is new again. This time I’m not talking about money. Betty suggested we buy a Lincoln Log set for the grandkids to play with. Turns out it was a great idea. They don’t plug in, it doesn’t take batteries, there’s no monitor, and there isn’t a memory card. It’s simply a mind challenging construction kit made out of wood to build the same kind of house Abe Lincoln and I grew up in.