Oh, and my grassroots campaign to eliminate the nickel isn't going all that well. This weekend, at a Little League game, I bought a bag of peanuts for 75 cents, which in itself is an affront to Decimalism, the belief in a single decimal monetary system.
The girl working the snack stand handed me my change and appologized.
"I'm out of quarters," she said, dropping five nickels into my hand.
Forget that I now had a palm full of the enemy. (That would be a good name for a teenaged memoir, don't you think? Palm Full of the Enemy? Maybe not.) I had forgotten completely about quarters! Egad! Quarters, being 0.25 of a dollar, aren't a Decimalist medium of commerce!
This is going to be a lot tougher than I thought.
So here's my revised plan: Per highly respected and not-at-all-curmudeonly columnist William Safire, we pull pennies out of circulation. (Bonus anti-terrorism impact: Al Qaeda fund managers holding large hoardes of cash are unable to turn in pennies fast enough and take a huge financial hit.) Hey, Bill says they go, I say they go. Then, per my incredibly enlightened vision of a tenth-of-a-cent-society, we put an end to the tyranty of the nickel and, now, quarters. Get 'em out of here. Then we keep dimes and half-dollars -- wait! Do we still have half-dollars? I don't think so. I haven't seen one of those in years, except in Vegas when you hit blackjack on a $3 bet. I think all the half-dollars must be in bags in the basement of one of the casinos out there. Probably the Luxor, because it sucks and has a lot of extra space where guests aren't.
OK, so we keep dimes and bring the half dollars out of storage and then we create a new coin, called a "fifth," which is worth 20 cents and has a picture of Dean Martin on it.
I think that works. Are you still with me?
You could also accomodate us binary folks by replacing Jefferson on the $2 bill with Sinatra. "Gimme a double."
Posted by: slimedog | 06/08/2004 at 10:49 AM
What piece of currency would Sammy, Peter, and Joey be placed on...?
Posted by: david | 06/08/2004 at 03:20 PM