Amanda on the Coin Flip: Just Use Your Brain

This adorable baby knows how ridiculous it is to live life by the coin.

When I first started dating Dave, I thought the coin flip was a quirky thing he did to pick his order at restaurants in a way that would make the server laugh. I soon learned it was more than that. The moment I fully realized how important the coin flip was to him was when I walked into his apartment to hear him chanting, “flip the coin! Flip the coin!” to our friend who was deciding where to go to grad school. Any decision that leaves Dave even marginally unsure of what to do, he will immediately try to solve with the coin. And he will follow the coin’s decision blindly.

The coin flip is only useful in the way that any exercise that makes something definitive is useful. Let me explain. Let’s say you are twelve and your mom asks you if you want macaroni and cheese for dinner or if you’d like to order pizza. You say you don’t really care. But when you see your mom pull out the pot to boil water, one of two things will happen: either that pizza starts sounding really good and you rush to grab the phone before your mom puts the pasta in that pot and your shot at pizza is blown, or you become content with the prospect of macaroni and cheese for dinner and you wait calmly until she calls you to the table. The mom is the decision maker for indecisive twelve year olds. The coin flip is the decision maker for indecisive grown-ups. After the coin hits the surface, there’s a good chance you will know what you were actually hoping for.

The coin flip brings out your gut feelings when you didn’t know you had any. And I’m all for following your gut.

So if the coin helps you come to a decision, that’s great. But if you realize you aren’t happy with the decision the coin made, go against it. Do not let a little metal thing with some dead president’s face on it dictate what you will do with your life. Put it in its place and use it for some gumballs or an arcade game instead.

Dave might argue that it’s silly to waste all your brainpower making unimportant decisions. Fine. I will cede that you can thoughtlessly use the coin for some mundane things, if it’s helpful to you. Here I have included a brief list of example predicaments and divided them into those which can be safely decided by the coin and those which you should employ logic for.

OK to use the coin	Not OK to use the coin
What movie should I see?	Where should I invest my life savings?
What should I make for lunch?	C-section or natural birth?
What clothes should I wear today?	Should I wear clothes today?

There is, however, a perk to dating someone who believes so unwaveringly in the power of the coin and fears horrible repercussions should he disobey it. Things that I want to do that I have 0% chance of getting Dave to do with me suddenly become things that I have a 50% chance shot at if I involve the coin. In this way, I have gotten Dave to do a number of things including:
• Watch Rent.
• Eat at a vegetarian restaurant that plays strange music that scares the bajeezus out of him.
• Go to poetry readings.

I have also been given a free pass on ordering a super girly drink at the bar because I had Dave flip a coin on what I should order.

Thus, while I don’t believe in the power of the coin, I sometimes embrace Dave’s belief in it. But as for me, my decision maker is a spongy mass of cells and tissue. It’s called my brain.



Clara's New Laugh by Mitch Bennett is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Dave on the Coin Flip: The Coin Never Lies

    If you have ever found yourself in a situation in which you have the choice of two possible outcomes, then you know there are only two ways of handling it. One: you can analyze the situation, hypothesize the short and long term effects of each decision and make a list of pros and cons to each outcome. Or you can do the smart thing and flip a coin.


There is a reason why the coin flip has been used to settle disputes for centuries and that is because the coin never lies. The beauty of the coin is that it shows no favoritism towards either side, it can be used to settle virtually any problem at any time, and you will always be able to find one on hand. Now, before I go any further it is important to explain that the coin can only actually settle a real dispute. The coin is never used to see if you should exit your eight story hotel room through the door or the window, or whether or not to wrestle an alligator, because there is no real conflict between the two options and the answer you want is perfectly clear to you (in other words, you want to wrestle the alligator). Therefore, the coin should only be used to choose one of two realistic options.

I regrettably learned the power of the coin the hard way while in college. One morning at 3 am, my roommate, his girlfriend, Amanda and I were debating whether we should go to the diner or get some sleep before our early classes. We flipped a coin, which suggested that we sleep. Though until then I have been a strict follower of the coin, I was upset with the outcome so much that I decided to give an emotional monologue about how we “cannot live our lives by the coin” and how the coin was “the worst idea we ever had.”

I was a fool and I recant that entire speech.

The four of us ended up going against the coin and had perhaps the worst diner experience we had ever had in our lives. I will eat almost anything, and I especially will eat anything that I ordered and am paying for, but my French onion soup, usually my favorite dish at that diner, tasted like how my four-year-old moccasins smelled after walking a mile in a rainstorm. The other dishes had similar problems: the fries were cold, the omelet half cooked. In fact, everyone had a problem with the food except for my roommate. As we sort of ate, but mostly just looked at our food, we patiently waited for our server to come so that we could ask for the check. We had not seen him since we got our food forty-five minutes ago.

Eventually, when he came with the check, my roommate asked for a box for the other half of his chicken wrap. After the server disappeared for almost an additional hour, we decided to leave, wrap in hand. Ultimately, the four of us returned two hours later, tired and dissatisfied, and we only had ourselves to blame for rejecting the coin. While this may not seem like it was a total disaster, I’m just grateful we chose this situation to not listen to the coin rather than a serious one with serious consequences. I have never gone against the coin since, and have heard too many disaster stories to even consider.

What I have learned in life is that there are basically two people in this world: those who listen to the coin and those who are doomed to live a life of misfortune and regret. It is not important to use the coin for every decision you have, but it is extremely important that you never go against the coin. Below I have made a brief list of those who listened to the coin, and those who openly rejected its wisdom.

Followed coin blindly	Went against coin
John D. Rockefeller	The Owner of Hostess
Thomas Jefferson	George W. Bush
Every lottery winner	Every Jets fan

Many believe that the coin flip is fate. Maybe it is fate, or maybe a butterfly flaps its wings in China and makes your quarter lands on tails. Fate or not, the importance of the coin should not be taken lightly. The coin defies logic and reason to no explanation, and while I cannot guarantee that always listening to the coin will bring you fame, power, and success, I can guarantee that it will steer you away from disaster, misfortune, and chaos. I can think of no better way to end then to leave you with my new favorite poem:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
I flipped a coin to make my choice
And that made all the difference.
                     -Robert Frost, had he flipped a coin



Call ! by Rob is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.