Heart and Mind

Three Crappy Coins

You know what I think is a weak practice? Taking something that is a well-known idiom and ammending it to mean the same thing. Let me explain.

We've all heard the expression "two cents"— as in "I'm going to throw in my two cents here" or "And that's my two cents"—where people are talking about contributing their thoughts, for whatever they're worth. And that's a good expression, isn't it? It works. It basically says, "I'm not trying to suggest I know more than anyone else, but I'm putting my ideas into the mix and you can do with it what you want."

But more and more lately, I've noticed people changing it to, "my three cents." I may have said once. Or written it, anyway. I seem to recall making a very long Internet post and capping it off by saying, "And that's my two cents...or maybe three." But I can't recall whether I actually did it or just thought about it. At any rate, my thought was to make a joke at my own expense, admitting that I may have dispensed even more than one person's allotment of comments. I thought it was mildly clever, I guess. Maybe I thought it was original and was mistaken about it.

Yet more and more I hear people saying, "my three cents," even when they don't say particularly much. And they don't even reference the "two cents" and make a joke about it.

The expression is starting to get blurred. The expression is my two cents. It's symbolic to begin with. Money has nothing to do with it, and even if you want to think that it does, nothing is worth two cents these days. Or three cents. They basically mean the same thing, which is "something of very little significance." So people should keep adding their two cents and leave the extra penny out of the equation.

Now, this may be unimportant, but let's be honest. It's an expression. You don't determine the worth of your statements in coins. So if we start saying "three cents," the next step is to we make determinations of when to add four cents or a dime or a half-dollar.

I should point out that I like to do things like ammend popular expression to meaning something different, such as "beauty is in the ear of the beholder." But that's not the same thing. It's my way of saying, "I want to use the sentiments of the expression, but switch them around so that it is appicable to something that it normally isn't." In this case, it's aural stimuli and not visual stimuli.

But two cents, three cents....same crap.

The ultimate example is when people refer to giving 110%, which is doubly lame because even though "give 100%" is the correct expression as a figurative quip, people also, ironically, mean it literally, too, and it's just plain impossible to give 110%.

But this is an example of something that we've already, as a society, fucked ourselves over with, because now "giving 110%" is an expression of it's own. Some person who thought they were clever decided that "giving your all" was no longer good enough, and we needed to start pushing people beyong their capabilities. (No wonder we have over achievers and perfectionists in our society). So, now we've got a jack-ass of an expression, "Give 110%," which is really the same as the old expression since no one can give more than is humanly possible, which is 100%. At the very least with the coins, it's possible to throw in more money, even if no one cares about an extra penny.

So where do we go now? 114%? I can picture two dolts have this coversation:

"I want you to give me everything you've got out there."

"You got it, man. I'll be giving 110%, man!"

"No, dude. I need better than that. I need 120%!"

Ugh. It irks me that giving 100% (and soon 110%) can possibly be synonymous with not putting in all your effort.

posted by Steve @ 3:26 PM