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Sunday, July 25, 2010

E Pluribus Unum

This is Steven Petrick Posting.

The new pennies for 2010 are in circulation. I just saw my first one earlier this month, and spoke with SVC about them briefly. The new penny replaces the Lincoln memorial with a shield and centers the motto on that side above the shield and in larger type then was used on previous pennies.

I am not the only person who has just seen one of the new pennies.

I was in a fast food store in Canyon, Texas, waiting to get my order. Canyon is a college town, and two young men near me were clearly college students. One of them was looking through his change, and happened upon one of the new pennies, it probably caught his eye because it was shiny and the shield was different from what he normally saw on the back of a penny. Seeing the motto, he commented to his friend about the "mistake", and wondered how many pennies with the miss-spelling were in circulation. I am guessing that after a decade or so of living, somehow he had never previously "read" a penny. His friend, however, agreed that the gibberish letters were a funny mistake and wondered what the words were supposed to have been.

I took that moment to interrupt and explain that it was not a misspelling, but the Latin words "E Pluribus Unum", meaning "out of many, one".

The two young lads, college students mind you, looked at me. The friend then said "What language is that? Mexican?"

I was stunned for a moment, so I did not reply immediately. As I finally opened my mouth to respond that Latin was the language of ancient Rome and that it is common to use it to express mottos, the young man holding the change (apparently the more introspective and deeper thinker of the two) revealed that he had been thinking about the motto for the last few seconds when he said (or words to this effect):

"I get it. It means it takes many pennies to make a dollar."

I was, at that point, struck speechless. Utterly dumbfounded.

At that point the two were called over to get their orders, so the conversation did not continue, but I felt very much like banging my head against the wall.