It All Comes Back…, Like a Bad Penny!

December 10th, 2014

A few months ago, I found a plastic bag full of really nasty and tarnished coins – mostly dimes, nickels, and quarters.  Nothing old or rare, mind you.  Just the nastiest-looking coins one likely has ever seen.  Like…, way too nasty to touch with bare hands.  Apparently, the coins had been left in a plastic bag tucked away inside a piece of storage furniture with some painting supplies on someone’s outdoor porch for at least several years.     

So, as the property owner didn’t want the coins, I decided to clean the coins up and spend them as there was at least thirty-five dollars worth of coins in the bag, if not more.  After soaking the coins in cleaning products and some further cleaning – twice, most of the tarnish had come off the coins.  While still somewhat nasty, the only real problem with the coins then was that the finish of the coins had also come off – more or less.  That is, the dimes, nickels, and quarters now all looked like pennies at first glance because those coins no longer had any silvery-looking finish.    

Being as nasty as the coins were even after cleaning, I decided to start using the coins to pay highway tolls.  I remember one toll-booth operator on the Massachusetts Turnpike thinking the coins were pennies and the looks on the faces of the New Jersey Turnpike toll-booth operators as well.  The best reaction, however, was when the New York Port Authority cop who was collecting tolls at the Throgs Neck Bridge thought the coins were fake and exclaimed that now she had “seen everything.”  :)     

But anyway, since spending many of those really nasty-looking coins throughout the northeastern United States and other states as I travelled west, it seems many of the coins have taken to following me.  That is to say, it seems when I am given loose change at a store, I am now forever being given coins (dimes, nickels, and quarters) that have no finish on them – and the coins I’m getting now often look like pennies at first glance too.  Can they be the same coins that I spent as I travelled throughout and across the nation?  Kind’a funny and weird, huh?  Let me know if you per chance get any of those coins too, will ‘ya? 

AVT

See:

Do Unto Others and the Same Will Be Done Unto You By Others !!

http://tornadotamer.blogspot.com/2009/10/do-unto-others-and-same-will-be-done.html

Secretive Truths

Once an entity appears to care more for the secrets it keeps than the entity cares for the revealing of truth in any given situation, at that point in time nothing the entity states is generally perceived as truthful by anyone.  This is especially so when the truth that was withheld could affect the safety and well-being of others from whom the truth is kept.  When this scenario comes to pass, it seems that nearly any amount of innuendo, hearsay, or pretextual fabrications about that untruthful entity can no longer be dismissed out-of-hand, regardless of how outlandish are any such claims about that potentially untruthful entity.  Again, this would be so because that seemingly untruthful entity then no longer would be perceived as truthful upon its denial of any outlandish claims to the contrary.  

AVT (December, 2014)

Judging In-Situ

When looking to pass judgment on the prior actions of others, particularly in a historical context, always be sure to account for the situational environment of the historical figure who took the actions upon which one looks to judge.  All too often it seems many authors look to persuade readers to a certain viewpoint as to why any historic figure acted in a given manner while the author is all too quick to pass judgment on those actions without explaining the entire situational environment present at the time of the actions in question.  Not to make excuses for the actions of anyone or anything like that.  But, what is now considered wrong or right, may not have been exactly so when the historic figure acted. 

AVT  (December, 2014)

An All-Powerful Government

The day may well be less than a generation away wherein the young people of that future time will have no one with whom to speak of the era in which folks could move freely and live unencumbered in the United States without an all-powerful and all-knowing government tracking nearly every action of nearly everyone in the nation – or certainly maintaining the ability to do so if it desired.  Or so it all seems, anyhow.  Maybe those of the future won’t care of such a fact, or merely not know to care - which would surely seem to be the preference of any such all-powerful government.

Adam Trotter (October, 2014)

See:

The Baby Boomer Generation: The End-All Hypocrites for the Ages?

http://avt777.blogspot.com/2011/04/baby-boomer-generation-end-all.html

 

Push-Me / Pull-You

Often it seems that the more one tries to push or force another to go forward in a certain direction, the more the other who is being pushed ultimately desires to proceed in the entirely opposite direction.

AVT  (September, 2014)

See:

Of the quest to control [any given situation] …..

http://adamvernontrotter.blogspot.com/2009/07/of-quest-to-control-any-given-situation.html