Dentrifical Inflation

So, I did something today that I don’t normally do. I picked up a penny off the sidewalk. Usually, this is the kind of thing I would mock Janna for doing, especially if it was hiding in the bottom of a murky puddle. However, this penny was particularly shiny, clean, and dry, and it made me think back to the old maxim, “Pick up a penny and have a day’s worth of good luck.”

So I picked it up, more as a token to help start the thought process. The reason, obviously, for saying that picking up a penny will bring a day’s worth of good luck, is that in the not too distant past, a penny could actually buy one a day’s worth of good luck. However, if one considers a minimum—and this on the bargain basement—price for a day of good luck, then I would guess, at today’s standards, a penny would buy you approximately a minute of good luck. Therefore, adjusted for inflation, the maxim should be, “Pick up a 10-spot and have a day’s worth of good luck.” However, this won’t even buy you 24 hours worth of good luck—you’d have to find at least a ten AND a five, or even better—to cover a 32-hour good luck period—one would want to find a twenty. If you take this analogy, quite possibly to its logical limit, a Benjamin will still buy you a week’s worth of good luck. Beyond that, I think, the money may be more trouble than its worth—anyone ever seen any number of cheesy comedies centered around this theme?

Well, this all occurred while walking to the dentist, at whose office, when I was but a child, I always had trouble keeping my mouth sufficiently open to the satisfaction of my dental hygienist, Pat. So, when the dentist asked me to say “ah” today, I decided to play a delightful little game with myself. And by delightful, I mean, I was unable to gnaw my arm off, so this was the closest mentally I could come to it. I tried to think of every possible monosyllabic word ending with the “ah” phoneme—and some polysyllabic ones as well—and by so mentally concentrating, I would keep my mouth in a sufficiently ajar posture. Here’s what I came up with, I’m sure Nevksy can check his scrabble dictionary to see if there are any I missed.

aw, ah, alleluia

bah, bra, blah

caw, craw, claw

draw

fah, flaw, foie gras

gaw, guffaw

haw

jaw

law

maw, ma, mama

nah

paw, pa, papa, Papua (New Guinea)

raw, Roy (Patrick or Vive le)

saw, straw, Shaw (Robert Gould)

thaw

yaw, ya

I hate going to the dentist.

Oh, apparently Boba Fett is taking the heat off Karl Rove. Make YOUR voice heard. This is a democracy, so if you speak softly you darn well better carry a big stick.