My two cents on 25 cents

Pictured above is a newly minted 2020 United States Quarter. I found it on the floor of my kitchen. It must have slipped out of my shorts pocket.

I rarely see cash or coins these days, as most transactions occur via credit card or via Apple Pay on my iPhone.

I had this quarter, and her sister, in my pocket because I recently came back from the pharmacy to get my weekly refill of Tramadol, an opioid-like pain reliever typically prescribed to pets, but thankfully prescribed to me to deal with my hip flexor strain, which happened while I was engaged in some very manly weightlifting exercises.

When the cashier at the drugstore rung me up, she told me the cost of my government-approved 7 day supply of horse pills, after my Rite Aid discount and the OSCAR insurance co-pay was 51 cents.

Hell, I thought, and whipped out a dollar bill. She asked if I had a penny. And for all reasons mentioned above, I did not. So in a rare moment of superior customer service, the cashier let me slide and handed me the two quarters.

I paid no attention and slid the coins in my deep cargo pants pockets and quickly reached for the hand sanitizer. As I do on all occasions of human to human contact in these crazy pandemic days. If one of the quarters had not fallen out of my pocket, I would never have given them any notice and this pointless blog posting would only be visible in a parallel, impossibly more boring, universe.

Which brings us back to the quarter in question. You see, it is unlike other quarters you've held in your hand.

For one, it is less weighty. It doesn't have the gravitas one usually associates with the Queen of all US coins. The King being the rarely seen 50 cent piece. The new quarter also lacks the girth of its predecessor. It's thinner. Flimsier. Doesn't feel right in the fingers.

And finally, and this should come as no surprise, this new quarter has the wrong texture. Less like the quarter you can conjure up in your brain stem and more like those shabby toy coins you might find at a street carnival or a third world country.

But the proof is in the pudding. Or shall we say the flipping and the twirling? Even before I flicked my thumb and sent this quarter skyward, I had a sneaky suspicion of the disappointment to come. And I was not disappointed. This coin will not hunt. It has neither the grace or the aerodynamics of quarters past. And flies through the air with all the style of a balsa-wood toy plane.

Don't even try spinning these new faux quarters on a table top. It will make you sad. They twirl with all the clumsiness of a fat kid on new ice skates.

The only thing you can say about the 2020 quarters is that they are heartbreakingly on brand and a glum reflection of our current state of the union: Shabby, Cheap and a shadow of their once glorious past.

If it were up to me, I'd tell the people who minted and pressed these new coins, "I want my money back."