TheBanyanTree: The lowly cent symbol

[Russ Doden]

The Lowly Cent Symbol


Have you noticed that the lowly cent sign is missing from the keyboard
of computers?  I hadn’t noticed that until just recently.  It wasn’t
due to my great observation abilities that I realized this was
missing.  Someone else brought it to my attention.  I realized you
don’t see this symbol used very often anymore.  Instead you see dollar
signs with the cents denoted.  As it happened, in yesterday’s mail I
received a flyer for a “$.99” sale.  Why not say a 99 cent sale and
use the cent sign?  Would some (mostly young” people not recognize it
since it isn’t on the keyboard?

The lowly cent sign is still available.  If a person knows how to use
the “character map” option in their computer you will find the cent
sign nestled away in many but certainly not all fonts!  It rests
there, perhaps in its’ retirement among many other no longer, or not
commonly used symbols.

I had to ask myself “How did this symbol fall out of favor?”  It made
me realize that change has lost much of the value it once had.  We get
change back, and either toss it in the “change jar” at home until it
builds up to some meaningful money or it is put some other place, out
of sight and out of mind.

This made me realize that maybe I’m getting older than I want to
admit!  I realized I could sound like the “gaffers and gammers” of
yesteryear.  I can still hear them tell me “when I was your age I
could buy . . . “ and they would talk about buying things for mere
pennies.  Well, they worked all day for mere pennies too!  The cent
sign had meaning then!  When I was a kid, a quarter was a big
allowance in the small town where I grew up.  You could take a
quarter, go the see a movie, get some junk food to rot your teeth, and
have a splendid afternoon.  Now it takes a quarter to buy a gumball!
That doesn’t quite compare to an afternoon at the movies somehow.

In our headlong rush toward ever more “things” it seems that the lowly
cent sign has become a casualty of “progress”.  Are we really
progressing or are we regressing into a form of a high tech barbaric
society where cents don’t count, only big bucks.  So, I sit here,
pondering the passing of the lowly cent sign, and wonder if perhaps,
just maybe, this lowly symbol needs to be brought back, to help us
remember that pennies count – as do so many other little things in
life.

Russ Doden
June 2010


-- 
Take things one day at a time
IF that is too much go 1 hour at a time
If that is too much, go 1 minute at a time
Miracles come one minute at a time.