Am I saving money or getting snared by semantics? Plus interest
BURTON W. COLE, COLUMNIST
By Burton W. Cole
I’m baffled by the decree that we need to spend money to save money.
Maybe it’s my advancing years or the weirdness of the English language, but lately I get confused easily. And this is one concept that plays a number on my feeble brain cells.
The cloud descended when the early chirping of the telephone wormed into my plans of sleeping in. The telemarketer told me that as a loyal customer (slave) to their credit card, I earned the right to join their shoppers club or travelers club or some such club for the low annual price of $89, which conveniently would be added to my credit card.
I grumbled, “No, thank you,” hung up and went back to sleep.
That afternoon, another telemarketer tried to sign me up to the same wonderful program.
“I told the lady who called here this morning I wasn’t interested and I haven’t changed my mind,” I said, mustering all the politeness I could buy on my credit limit.
“But we’re just trying to save you money. Don’t you want to save money, Mr. Cole?”
My confused brain muddled through that one, and finally I replied, “No,” and hung up. In my mind that saved me $89, plus interest.
Sure, I could have saved $300 or so with the spending club. But to do so, I would have had to buy probably $6,000 worth of stuff I wouldn’t have bought in the first place. Plus the $89 for the club membership thereby saving me $6,089. Plus interest. To get $300.
I don’t understand.
It’s the same reasoning my failing gray matter attempted back in the days when I was doing tandem clothes shopping.
“We have to buy these shoes,” she’d say. “They’re 30 percent off!”
“So that means,” I calculated, “that $89 shoes are now $62, so if we bought them, we’d save $27?”
“Exactly!”
“But if we left them right there on the shelf and walked out of the store, we’d save $89, which is 100 percent. Hmm, which sounds like the better deal.”
I was told I didn’t grasp the definition of saving money.
Maybe so. The English language itself is a strange and complex beast. An e-mail I received last week posed this language stumper: If a writer writes, why doesn’t a finger fing? Or a hammer ham?
More questions of semantics:
Why are boxing rings square?
Why are guinea pigs neither pigs nor from Guinea?
Why are sweetmeats candies, but sweetbreads, which aren’t sweet, meat?
English muffins weren’t invented in England, nor French fries in France, so why do we call them that?
Where’s the ham in hamburger? Or the egg in eggplant?
If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn’t the plural of both beeth? It’s goose, geese, so moose, meese?
If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?
If I no longer want to be uncouth, how do I become couth?
Or, if my desk drawer is crammed with odds and ends, and I get rid of all but one of them, what do I call it?
The English language is very perplexing. So maybe, just maybe, because of our goofy language, I really do have to spend money to save money. Maybe I really don’t keep more cash in my pocket by not only passing up full price, but the sale price too.
Maybe.
Yeah, right. Fat chance! Or is it slim chance? It’s all the same difference. And neither one cost my credit card $89.
Cole’s always a little grumpy when awakened from his nap. Call him — quietly — with your deal at burtseyeview@gmail .com or at the Burton W. Cole page on Facebook.