Halfway Serious Question
Long-time SoF readers know that I love Canada, Canadians, and especially their folk singers. Today I would like to take the opportunity to congratulate the Canadians, and their dollar (aka "the loony") for reaching parity with the U.S. dollar (aka "real money"), for the first time in 30 years.
But I have serious question, which has plagued me for years-- what am I to do with all the Canadian pennies that wind up in my pockets? I probably accumulate several a week. They pile up. You can't legitimately get rid of them-- heck, it's hard to get anyone here to accept real American pennies, let alone foreign ones. So should I:
1) Just throw them away? Sometimes I do, but I feel that I am dissing my Canadian neighbors.
2) Mail them to friends in Canada? I've done the math, and the postage is more than their value.
3 ) Hoard them, in anticipation of the day (tomorrow?) when Canadian money is worth more than U.S., and there will be a whole "black market" of goods which can only be purchased with Canadian cash?
4) Try to melt them down into a paperweight?
5) Turn them into a collage of some sort, to put in my office?
I am open to other good suggestions.
But I have serious question, which has plagued me for years-- what am I to do with all the Canadian pennies that wind up in my pockets? I probably accumulate several a week. They pile up. You can't legitimately get rid of them-- heck, it's hard to get anyone here to accept real American pennies, let alone foreign ones. So should I:
1) Just throw them away? Sometimes I do, but I feel that I am dissing my Canadian neighbors.
2) Mail them to friends in Canada? I've done the math, and the postage is more than their value.
3 ) Hoard them, in anticipation of the day (tomorrow?) when Canadian money is worth more than U.S., and there will be a whole "black market" of goods which can only be purchased with Canadian cash?
4) Try to melt them down into a paperweight?
5) Turn them into a collage of some sort, to put in my office?
I am open to other good suggestions.
posted by Turbo at 10:40 AM
7 Comments:
Put them in a sock. Hide it in the back of a drawer. When it gets big you can lock your office door, pour them out over your hands, and cackle, "Pennies, Pennies!".
During the day you can fantasize where to hide it next.
Stage ritual confrontations with the cleaning staff about what happened to the 1957 penny that was certainly in there last week.
Misery (or is it miserliness?) need not be an expensive hobby! It can be indulged for just pennies a week!
Put them all in a jar, with a note on it "guess the number of pennies and win them". Charge a quarter per guess.
Alternately, buy a big cedar chest, dump them in there, and claim to be saving for your trousseau if anyone asks.
Or just be lame and take them all to a major grocery store next time you're no this side of the border, dump them into the automatic change sorting and rolling machine, and then use them to buy a pint in a pub - they can't legally refuse them (the rolling is just to be nice). Or pay those pesky girl guides/cadets/fund raising kids for their $2 chocolate bars (which they will invariably be trying to sell you on the way out the door) with them.
Me, I dump them all in the have a penny leave a penny jar at the cash at the coffee shop, or the send a kid to camp jar.
I think the collage idea has real merit. Think of the possibilities.
Alternately you could save them a little longer. The Canadian penny is being phased out next year. You could list them on eBay as "Rare Foreign Coins - no longer in circulation!" With the right slogan people will buy anything.
Maybe you could list them as "Rare Lilliputian Copper Kettles, slightly damaged" and claim that these tiny pots are folk art from the Smallish state?
Coin rings
buy timbits at tim hortons! or do what I did and stick pennies into electrical outlets and see what happens.
Or you could just stick with the timbits.
skip them across the skin of an ocean or a lake.
in the name of art, glue them in small geometric designs throughout locations in smallish city (sidewalks, lightposts, brick walls).
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