A Penny for Your Thoughts

Back in 2006, Columbia High School allowed non-freshman to leave school for lunch. This meant they could pick up sandwiches from Blimpie, Jamaican beef patties from J&J’s, or pizza bagels from the A&P. It also meant that it was very easy to cut class during periods six and seven.

A lot of us took to using this lunchtime freedom to eat outside, rather than simply buying food and returning to the cafeteria as CHS’ policy architects had intended. I don’t know if it was the dirty cafeteria that drove us out, or just the allure of the tree that the security guards would shoo us away from if we waited there for friends after school, but whatever the cause, we’d eat under the tree. We modified the plan slightly for rain or snow, huddling under the school’s arching entrance instead. To go back inside would be to give up our hard earned freedom, and even those who brought lunch from home or preferred the cafeteria prices agreed that the stoop was better.

Even though the actual eating took place outside, there was still occasionally reason to buy lunch from the school. Their lines were shorter, prices were lower, and, notably, prices were more convenient. That is to say, a $2.50 sandwich did not become $2.65 after tax, and didn’t leave your pocket full of useless pennies. Nonetheless, given the choice, I was a pizza bagel or J&J’s man, so I’d often leave lunch with a tax-induced jingle in my step. Usually I waited until I got home and tossed the coins in a tin I told myself I’d one day take to the bank, but on one occasion I decided to put them to use.

“A penny for your thoughts?” I asked the nearest person.

“Are you really going to give me a penny?” she asked, reasonably. I had to concede that that was in fact a thought, so I tossed her one and moved on.

“A penny for your thoughts?”

“I want a penny.”

That was undeniably a thought too.

“A penny for your thoughts?”

“Uhm, I like your hair.”

That might have been a lie for the sake of a free penny, but this was a fun game so I let it go. Mostly, I appreciated that this result was not directly related to the expression I began the exchange with. This confirms, I think, why the expression is a dumb one, because as soon as one mentions the potential contract, that replaces whatever the thinker might otherwise be thinking about. We should say, “a penny for your previous thoughts” or maybe the more specific “a penny for what you thought just now.”

Eventually, I ran out of pennies, and had to try a nickel. This struck me as a better deal, because each subsequent thought can follow from the first one, so it’s a proportionally large reward for proportionally less effort. It’s also a better deal for the thought-purchaser, as you’re more likely to get beyond the initial skepticism. No one wanted to take me up on it though, perhaps because at lunchtime no one is in to thinking that much.