What should you bend over for?

Last week was remarkable for one reason, and one reason alone: I found a lot of dimes on the sidewalk.

Not all in a cluster together -- one at a time, on separate sidewalks, on separate days.

Amazed? (Probably not, but please ooh and aah anyway.)

It got me to wondering how many people had passed by those sidewalk dimes without bothering to bend over and pick them up. After all, a dime is a lot of money! I remember in college that my monthly budget was measured in Ramen Noodle Equivalents, which cost $0.10 per package at that time. (Go to the theater? Heck no! A movie ticket is 70 Ramen Noodle Equivalents!)

That, in turn, got me to wondering whether it's fiscally worthwhile for me now to take the time to pick up a dime off the sidewalk.

Also by happenstance, I heard that Mitt Romney made $22 million dollars per year for the past two years. That got me to wondering how much money would have to be on the sidewalk for it to be worth his time to pick it up.

And thus is born a new social metric: the Worth Bending Over (WBO) scale.

- First, the time factor: Assuming healthy knees and nimble fingers, it takes about 2 seconds to bend down and pick up a coin. (Also assuming no one has superglued the coin to the ground.) Add in 2 seconds for the momentary slowdown in your gait pre- and post- coin pickup, and another 1 second for the inevitable slight veer to line up your path with the coin. Total time = 5 seconds.

Now on to the People Math:

MITT ROMNEY: $22 million a year, minus his reportedly 14% tax rate, gives a take-home of $18,920,000. Average that over 365 days in the year for $51,835 a day, which is $0.60 per second. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt on the healthy knees, nimble hands, and lack of superglue pranksters. Running the numbers, there would have to be $3 laying on the ground for it to be worth his time to stop and pick it up. There's no such thing as a $3 bill, and he'd be wasting his time if he stopped at every $1 to pick it up, unroll it, and figure out whether it was actually three $1 dollar bills folded up together, so really to be on the safe side he'd better not stop unless it's a $5. Mitt Romney's WBO = $5.

ME: My income after taxes averages to $103 a day. (Keep in mind, this sometimes involves working 80 hours a week, so my real hourly pay is still hovering just above minimum wage.) Spread that across 24 hours, and I make 7 cents a minute. (Yeesh. My long distance calls cost more per minute than I earn.) That's just over a tenth of a penny per second. Which means that if I stop to pick up a penny, I've just doubled my per-second wages. Which is why finding a bunch of dimes on the sidewalks of St Louis this week was a remarkable windfall, for which I should be heartily congratulated. Sarah's WBO = $... a tenth of a penny

Thoroughly demoralized by my WBO, I will now revert to thinking of my budget in Ramen Noodle Equivalents.