Cynical Nation

Or more precisely, too many different kinds of money. That's why I reached into my change bowl for what I thought was 70 cents, and realized I was 20 cents short when I got where I was going.

See, money is too hard to tell apart these days. It used to be that I could recognize the patterns of all the coins immediately, without even trying, because I was intimately familiar with them. A quarter was always the big chunky coin with the bad-ass eagle on the back and someone who looked like my grandma on front. (Yeah, there was a brief period in 1976 when the eagle was replaced by the shot-up marching band, but you don't see those too much anymore.)

Now there are umpteen-jillion different quarter backs (or however many states there are) and that just confuses things. Sure, I thought the state quarters program was cool, and I collected them when they first came out until I got bored somewhere around Missouri. I probably won't make it to those big square states.

But still, it was easy enough, because any chunky coin with an unfamiliar design on its back is a quarter, right? Not anymore. What I grabbed by mistake yesterday was the new Lousiana Purchase nickel (not to be confused with the new Gay Jefferson nickel.) They're also bringing back the buffalo and some thing with trees.

When the first changes in appearance came around, I figured we were probably due for an overhaul, but isn't this a bit much? Do we really need quarters and nickels to have completely unpredictable designs simultaneously? And do we really need a new 20 dollar bill every 3 weeks? Is it just me? Am I just being crotchety?