Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Flattening pennies
Yesterday at the zoo I did one of those machines where you flatten a penny and imprint it with a wacky design. In this case, it was two pandas. For a while, Beth and I would put a penny through those machines wherever we found them. I have one here with two crabs on it from Baltimore, a T-Rex from the St. Louis Science Center, and an SR-71 from the Air & Space Museum. I know for a fact that there are others -- I remember an Empire State Building for sure -- where they are, who knows.
I remember as a kid we would put change on the train tracks to flatten them. Believe or not, this actually does work, but the problem is that often the change gets shot off in any direction, making them hard to find after they've been squished. Also, rumor is that the authorities frown on this practice.
I googled "flattening pennies", and apparently there is a Squished Penny Museum in D.C. -- the entire collection is in some person's apartment. Collectors call flattened pennies "elongateds", which is a proto-Turkish word for "the curious act of converting money into a useless yet mildly amusing form".
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I remember as a kid we would put change on the train tracks to flatten them. Believe or not, this actually does work, but the problem is that often the change gets shot off in any direction, making them hard to find after they've been squished. Also, rumor is that the authorities frown on this practice.
I googled "flattening pennies", and apparently there is a Squished Penny Museum in D.C. -- the entire collection is in some person's apartment. Collectors call flattened pennies "elongateds", which is a proto-Turkish word for "the curious act of converting money into a useless yet mildly amusing form".
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