Someone tried to "penny" me

Post Reply New Topic

I was walking today and some guys in a car drove by and shouted things and I heard a coin hit the wall next to the sidewalk right near me. My friend in elementary school told me once that people try to "penny" people sometimes, which is to throw a coin out a car window at someone, because it's going fast enough to hurt them.
Can someone give me a list of reasons why they would do this?
Is this something really bad or is this not very serious and might happen to people regularly?
I got kind of scared and ran home because after I'd walked a bit further I thought I saw the same car trying to come by again closer.

1. They're sociopathic enough to think it's fun.

That's really all the reason you need. Don't try to understand it; they're bullies and they don't think about other people's feelings.

As for it hurting you: I suppose it could hit hard enough to sting, but not much more. To really hurt you, the coin would have to be thrown from something going much faster than a car. (A car going 50 mph is about as fast as a softball pitch; a penny is much smaller than a softball, and much flatter, so more susceptible to air resistance--thus, not very dangerous unless it hits you in the eye or something.)

I think it should be perfectly legal to shoot people who behave like this.

Shoot them? No. But it IS assault, and you can take them to court for it. Get their license plates if they try it again.

Yes, throwing a penny out of a moving car at someone isn't likely to hurt them seriously, but neither is throwing a glass of water in their face or slapping them with an open palm, and both of those are crimes (misdemeanor crimes, probably). Simple assault, usually the sort where they give you community service... but maybe next time they'd think twice.

That's a hazing ritual I think. At least in secondary/high schooling. Doing it to random people is for fon, not 'sociopathy' given 'pennying' isnt really intended to hurt people I think. IF they wanted that they'd throw bricks or somethign heavier.

And what do you call scaring and possibly hurting people "for fun"? I call it sociopathic. At least as sociopathic as idiot schoolyard bullies are.

Never heard of that... strange.

This is new to me. I'm familiar with egging (intimately) and paintballing. I can't say I was especially targeted, it was startling but the eggs were overall harmless as I only had to rinse off my shoes. Fortunately I've never been hit by a paintball but the local news has reported sporadic incidents with the implication that it is a serious misdemeanor, some YMAs have gotten 1 year in jail when caught.

Anything expelled from a moving vehicle aside from water and chicken feathers ought to qualify as a felony IMO, that includes horrible amplified bassy car stereos.

Deleted.

Last edited by EstherJ on 14 Nov 2012, 1:14 am, edited 1 time in total.

Not at all trying to make light of what happened to you, but when you said someone tried to "penny" you the first thing I thought of was Sheldon from Big Bang Theory...
knock knock knock "Penny"
knock knock knock "Penny"
knock knock knock "Penny"

LoL, knock knock knock, Penny. That's exactly what I was thinking when I clicked this topic.

As for throwing pennies at people, I've never heard of that. It sounds like one of those irritating things adolescent males might do. Enough to hurt but most likely not bad. Cowardly too, because there's no chance you can respond before they are gone.

Pennying freshmen was a ritual at my high school. The ground in the quad was brown with thousands of pennies.

This is mean, and the people doing it are jerkwads.

I've never had anyone penny me before, but I did have someone throw a piece of fried chicken at me.

That's just mean and stupid behavior. But, if I didn't get hurt I would be scrambling to collect the penny. I can't resist picking them up. We soon won't have pennies anymore in Canada. I'm keeping everything I collect now.

Totally agree. I've never had a coin thrown at me, but I'm familiar with the kind of idiots described. It's difficult to see any motivation for it other than deriving enjoyment from the suffering they cause to others. If that's not sociopathic then I don't know what is.