"pennies" news and stories

I wish I had thought of this in high school. What I a great way to protest. About 29 kids at Readington Middle School, New Jersey decided to protest the short lunch period by paying for their lunch in pennies. Yep, entirely in pennies. That would be 200 pennies per person that cafeteria workers had to count. Brilliant!

The downside is that the group apparently caused some students to go without lunch that day, which is just a confirmation of how short the lunch time must be.

The prank also got its participants two days' detention. I'm a little torn on that. The students didn't break any rules. They offered legal tender. They only inconvenienced some school employees. At the same time, they inconvenienced some other students who didn't get lunch. Everyone needs to get a healthy lunch (such as it is in public schools). So I think maybe they could use the detention time to think of ways to express their concerns that won't hurt fellow students.

I still thing the protest was brilliant. I was friends with some of the creative, rebellious types, but being the oldest child in my family I was just a little too, um, "follow the rules"to think of something like this. I'm not saying I wouldn't go along with this stunt, I just wouldn't have thought of it.

[Via wcbstv.com]

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If, for some reason, you aren't familiar with the practice of giving candy out to costumed children on Halloween, you might want to take a look at the guide put together by Stuff Magazine explaining the best and worst things to give out. Eager trick or treaters look forward to participating in the ritual every year and we wouldn't want to disappoint them. The worst "treats" include:

• Apples -- They're tasty, but they're not candy. They're "disappointing as hell for a little kid expecting a Snickers."
• Marshmallows -- Yes, they're candy, but they don't usually come individually wrapped -- a must for Halloween treats.
• A bag of pennies -- "It's like giving away a gift certificate for a piece of gum." Save up all those pennies and buy a bag of the real thing.
• Smarties -- The U.S. Smarties are chalky and kids don't even seem to enjoy them, despite the fact that they sometimes eat them on the grounds that they still constitute candy. Try to get U.K. Smarties (similar to M&M's) or avoid the candy mixes that include these.
• Anything homemade -- "This one is alright if you only give them to kids with neglectful parents." Any responsible parent is going to dump something unwrapped as fast as possible. Save your energy.
• Raisins -- "People generally give them out under the pretense that they want to make kids healthier. In reality, they give them out because they hate fun." The boxed raisins never taste all that fresh anyway.

The best options would include "anything made by a real candy company," preferably king-sized versions.

After all, any resulting cavities aren't going to end up on your dental bill.

[Thanks, Patrick]

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I've always been of the mind that most breakfast burritos are a less than healthy way to start the day. A man in Gillette, Wyoming, might agree. He recently bit into a convenience store bacon and egg burrito and broke his upper right molar on a penny that was embedded in the breakfast roll-up. The man said that the wrapping was intact when he  bought the burrito, so he suspects that the pennies made their way into the food while it was being made. Try as I might, none of the articles I found listed the brand of burrito or the convenience store.

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