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Sunday afternoon found me on a mission of mercy to get some of Nicholas’ favourite comfort foods from our local hole-in-the-wall Chinese take-out place just up the Rogers Lane from us.

You know he’s feeling absolutely wretched when he’s asking for the big containers of won-ton and hot-and-sour soup and you don’t even have to look at him to know he’s definitely feeling like the fourth day of a three-day liberty pass!

We’ve all been there and done that…had a case of that rotten crud or cold that makes you think that you’re well on your way to dying but then you get that wracking cough and the principal product from the nasal passages starts going like a gushing oil well in Texas and then your thought turns to the even more horrifying thought that you might well live through that misery.

Anywho, after a quick run to the neighbouring ghetto Food Lion (not quite the “now with 15% more scum and villainy” that is the ghetto Walmart just a few blocks away on New Bern Av) to get his other sickness elixir in the form of ginger ale, it was time to put in the order and wait for the guys behind the plexiglass shield to do their magic with the wok!

On the little table I sat down at to wait was sitting a penny.

With the recent decision by the US Mint to finally stop striking that lowliest of American coinage (though it is not officially withdrawn as is the trend for low-denomination coins worldwide as that can only be done by an act of Congress), you can already see the signs going up everywhere about the dire shortage of pennies and hear the stories of how the last ones from the mint will be worth million$ (as if any of them would actually escape into the wild knowing the proclivities toward self-enrichment that is the hallmarks of the current administration who given half a chance would assuredly stash the whole final striking into their Scrooge McDuck money vaults).

Now this is the point where I’m probably going to do irreparable harm to my usual tendencies and reputation toward being an introvert by nature if not practise.

Somehow, the conversation at a neighbouring table where a couple of ladies were waiting for their order on a lazy and balmy Sunday afternoon that Wang’s wasn’t actually preparing and bagging the food at their usual warp speed turned not on a dime but rather a penny and that’s how the resulting stream of conversations went amongst several strangers (myself included) who had never seen each other prior to that afternoon:

• The first topic was the use of the penny as a psychological ploy by marketers to induce people into thinking there was much more value in that penny than it is actually worth. Prices ending in a 9 (i.e. $3.99 vs $4) or prices at the petrol pumps where the advertised prices at competing stations might well be only a penny off from each other but that’ll be enough to see the pumps at the “cheaper” station filled with cars trying to maximise their deal.
• Speaking of petrol pricing, it’s already loaded with the perception of infinitesimal value marketing that’s been in play since the 1920s/1930s with that wretched “9/10” tacked on to the end of the price which the additional “penny value marketing” just exacerbates further. Never mind that you can’t pump a penny’s worth of petrol and get 1/10 of a cent in change, that 9/10 of a cent has always meant to make the dealer seem cheaper than one that would price petrol in whole cents (a guy in New Jersey tried to do just that decades ago…his competitors made sure that not only did he regret it in the usual Jersey fashion, he was ultimately run out of the business entirely in the only state where pumping your own gas is completely illegal).
• The cost of minting a penny worth only one cent was actually five cents when accounting for the copper cladding the zinc alloy coin. The nickel is probably next to face a halting of minting the coins as they cost 14 cents to mint for a coin only worth five cents.
• Staying on topic about the economy, it was noticed that on multiple fronts that what we’re being told about inflation and prices doesn’t seem to match the reality on the store shelves and at the petrol pumps. I will admit to being a bit impertinent and cheeky by suggesting that the administration was probably right about their economic assertions but only one place comes to mind where they could possibly be true…Fantasyland!
• Our fourth player in the conversation arrives and canvasses the assembled waiting patrons for what they’d ordered as she’s definitely looking to order something that isn’t the usual chicken with Asian birdseed (sesame). She really seems interested in the shrimp in lobster sauce after giving her less than favourable view of the chicken used by this joint. In fairness, she does have a point…the chicken does tend to vary from dish to dish but I tend to stick with the options that use the chicken I can more readily identify as chicken as opposed to a rubber substitute. 🙂
• Whilst she’s contemplating the other options that had been selected (Nick’s soups and the General Tso’s he added on for some protein and the vegetables and rice ordered by the other two ladies), we do make a slight detour riffing on her expressed chicken disdain with an observation that those of us who have actually seen the foul (no pun intended) conditions that the average non-free range chicken lives in on a daily basis, one might be inclined to swear off ever wanting to eat chicken at all. I’m certainly nowhere near as experienced in farm life as pretty much everyone else on my father’s side of the family but I know what I’ve seen on those visits and even though it’s been decades, there is still a bit of an icky feeling when bagging some of the Lord’s bird at Chick-Fil-A but I manage to push past it as quickly as I possibly can. 😉
• Speaking of ignoring ingredients one would rather not think of, Worcestershire sauce comes to mind. Yes, I know there’s one ingredient prominently listed toward the front of the list I’d never willingly touch in it’s more intact form that the truly insane amongst us likes on a pizza but that’s not going to stop me from using it liberally when doing up some steaks in a marinade or just going for some dousing in the pan. If you don’t know what I’m talking about…do yourself a favour and don’t go looking for it. You’ll be much happier for it… 🙂
• As that discussion is winding down, our new friend has finally decided on what she’s ordering…sesame chicken and an egg-drop soup. So much for going off-piste and that was noticed by the rest of us but we decided to let it slide without comment.
• The other two ladies finally receive their order after about 15 minutes and they’re off so it’s just me and the newcomer and we decide to play the “Fool the Guesser” game popularised on the State Fair’s midway and discovered that when it comes to guessing age…I’m the one far better suited to guessing age. My guess of 43 compared to her actual 45 years would have seen me keep her money and the prizes on my cart but she came in at 45 which is well below my actual age.
• That took us to a slight detour where I mentioned my favourite bar maid Lucy at Ray’s Knight Out pub near UCF also thinking that I was way older than I actually was and how shocked she was when I varied from my usual practise of the burger and fries to go back to my flat to study by actually ordering a pint of Guinness and actually staying at the pub to eat. She was shocked that I’d ordered a pint because “you never drink” and that’s when she discovered I’d literally turned 21 the day prior and the look of horror on her face was beyond priceless. I did tease her a bit about being a bit put out that I could have had a pint those past three years and she’d have never carded me but we had a bit of a laugh about it afterwards and the next few times I turned up, I’d keep her on her toes by varying whether I stayed there and if I had a pint with the best burger Orlando ever knew.
• Seeing that guessing age was a clear advantage to me, we changed it up and decided to guess where we were from originally. Let’s just say that she didn’t fare terribly well in that department, either… 😉
• When it was my turn to guess, I had to admit that her accent was throwing me off slightly but that if I were pressed on a definitive guess, I was inclined to choose the coastal areas round Charleston SC, possibly toward Savannah and coastal Georgia. That actually caught her by surprise and she asked me why I was guessing that area and I told her that I was hearing more than a little bit of Gullah (or geechee as it’s sometimes called) which is an extremely distinctive African-American dialect that sounds unlike any of the accents in the region round it.
• Apparently I’m only the second person in her life to actually guess that accurately as they usually guess her for a New Yorker even though she’s only been in the city once (and I get the distinct impression that was plenty enough for her!). It’s hard to describe but if you’ve ever heard Gullah, you’ll never forget it. It reminded me of the time when I worked at BCBSNC that our division had a director from the UK who swore I’d never be able to guess where he was from originally. I listened to Graeme a bit and told him that as best I can tell that he had the touch of Lancashire about him and if I were really to put my money on it, I’d wager that he was a Burnley Football Club supporter. It turned out that he grew up about ten miles away from Turf Moor stadium, the home ground of Burnley FC. If you know what you’re listening for (and having grown up with the BBC, they had all of the variants you could imagine on air), you can tell a Geordie from a Scouser from someone from the East End like it’s night and day. Picking from amongst the various Lancashire dialects is a bit harder but with practise, it’ll be second nature soon enough.

By this point, both of our orders were finally ready (and I’m sure Nicholas was wondering if a black hole had suddenly opened up and swallowed the Traverse whole with how long it had taken) and it was time to go our separate ways.

But that chance encounter at our Chinese joint helps restore my faith that Americans from all walks of life who have never met each other before are capable of having an enjoyable conversation that even could stray toward topics of current political interest on occasion without coming to blows.

And it seemed like a pretty good idea — getting boys from all over the country, boys of all nationalities and ways of living — getting them together. Let them find out what makes different people tick the way they do. Because I wouldn’t give you two cents for all your fancy rules if, behind them, they didn’t have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness and a — a little lookin’ out for the other fella, too.

Senator Jefferson Smith — “Mr Smith Goes To Washington” (1939)

The key is being willing to listen and try to understand the other person’s point of view. Actively listen and learn what makes them tick!

That’s the key survival attribute for your average introvert, by the way. We tend to be much better at listening than speaking for a reason…it’s what we prefer to do in conversation because at the end of the day, we want to better understand the confusing and chaotic world in which we find ourselves.

Introverts of the world…unite! Separately, of course… 😉